Birthday Paper › What happened on …? › December 5
On this day
What happened on December 5?
December 5 is day 339 of the year, day 340 in leap years. On December 5, 1901, the American film producer Walt Disney was born. In 1894, the Reichstag building in Berlin was ceremoniously handed over for its intended purpose. Additionally, locomotive driver Harry Deterling fled in 1961 with a passenger train from the GDR to West Berlin.
Create the paper for December 5 · €14.90
The paper tells the story of your exact birthday: news, number-one hit and weather from the day of birth.
Events on December 5
- 1492 Christopher Columbus discovers the Caribbean island of Hispaniola on his first voyage.
- 1757 Prussian troops defeat the almost twice as strong Austrians in the Battle of Leuthen in the Seven Years' War. The oblique order is used for the last time as a military tactic.
- 1848 Through a speech by US President James K. Polk before the US Congress that gold had indeed been found in California, the California Gold Rush develops into a national "migration of peoples".
- 1894 In Berlin, the Reichstag building is handed over for its intended purpose with the ceremonial laying of the final stone.
- 1933 The alcohol prohibition in the USA, in effect since 1919, ends at the federal level through the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution in the state of Utah. Individual states, however, continue to maintain Prohibition.
- 1945 Flight 19 of the US Navy disappears on a routine training flight. This event forms the basis for the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
- 1955 The Montgomery bus boycott begins. It is directed against the policy of segregation in the Southern states and becomes the catalyst for the end of racial segregation in the USA.
- 1961 Locomotive driver Harry Deterling flees with 24 other people on a passenger train from the GDR through the border barriers to West Berlin. The event is filmed in 1963 under the title "Durchbruch Lok 234" by Frank Wisbar.
- 1993 Germany wins the Davis Cup in Düsseldorf 4-1 against Australia.
- 1995 The first episode of the Harald Schmidt Show is broadcast.
- 2006 In Bonn, the match between the world chess champion and a chess computer ends. Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik loses to the chess program Deep Fritz 2-4. It is the second defeat of a world champion against a computer in chess.
- 2025 During the school strike against conscription, 55,000 female and male students protest in more than 100 German cities against the reintroduction of conscription.
Born on December 5
- 1890 Fritz Lang, Austrian-German-American film director
- 1901 Walt Disney, American animator, film producer and director
- 1901 Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel laureate
- 1911 Wladyslaw Szpilman, Polish musician
- 1942 Herbert Dreilich, German rock musician
- 1942 Klaus Sammer, German football player and coach
- 1952 Walter Sittler, German actor
- 1962 Marion Kracht, German actress
- 1971 Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, German politician, management consultant, television presenter and author
- 1982 Keri Hilson, American R&B singer and songwriter
Is your birthday on December 5?
Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on December 5 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.
- For every birth year from 1946
- 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
- With a greeting page for voice and video messages
Create the paper for December 5 · €14.90
Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „5. Dezember“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.
More days in December
The paper for December 5
Choose the birth year, add a few sentences about the person, done. Usually in your inbox within 15 minutes.
Create the paper for December 5 · €14.90
Fiperly
Mutify
KIPODE
Mia Amare
HealthMetricsLab