June 5 is the 156th day of the year (157th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 209 days remain until the end of the year.
On this date ... 1610 – The masque “Tethys' Festival” is performed at Whitehall Palace to celebrate the investiture of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.
1644 – The Qing dynasty's Manchu forces led by the Shunzhi Emperor take Beijing during the collapse of the Ming dynasty.
1794 – Haitian Revolution: Battle of Port-Républicain: British troops capture the capital of Saint-Domingue.
1798 – Battle of New Ross: The attempt to spread the United Irish Rebellion into Munster is defeated.
1817 – The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, is launched.
1829 – HMS Pickle captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
1832 – The June Rebellion breaks out in Paris in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy of Louis Philippe.
1837 – Houston is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.
1849 – Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution.
1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
1862 – As the Treaty of Saigon is signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Truong Dinh de cides to defy Emperor Tu Duc of Vietnam and fight on against the Europeans.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Piedmont: Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.
1873 – Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar closes the great slave market under the terms of a treaty with Great Britain.
1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris.
1888 – The Rio de la Plata earthquake takes place.
1893 – The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and stepmother begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
1900 – Second Boer War: British soldiers take Pretoria.[ 1915 – Denmark amends its constitution to allow women's suffrage.
1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court; he is the first American Jew to hold such a position.
1916 – World War I: The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire breaks out.
1917 – World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as 'Army registration day'.
1940 – World War II: After a brief lull in the Battle of France, the Germans renew the offensive against the remaining French divisions south of the River Somme in Operation Fall Rot ('Case Red').
1941 – World War II: Four thousand Chongqing residents are asphyxiated in a bomb shelter during the Bombing of Chongqing.
1942 – World War II: The United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
1944 – World War II: More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for DDay.
1945 – The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.
1946 – A fire in the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, kills 61 people.
1947 – Cold War: Marshall Plan: In a speech at Harvard University, the United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.
1949 – Thailand elects Orapin Chaiyakan, the first female member of Thailand's Parliament.
1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, 'Hound Dog', on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
1959 – The first government of Singapore is sworn in.
1960 – The Lake Bodom murders occur in Finland.
1963 – The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns in a sex scandal known as the 'Profumo affair'.
1963 – Movement of 15 Khordad: Protests against the arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In several cities, masses of angry demonstrators are confronted by tanks and paratroopers.
1967 – The Six-Day War begins: Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian air-fields in response to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border.
1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.
1975 – The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War.
1975 – The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum on membership of the European Economic Community (EEC).[13]
• 1976 – The Teton Dam in Idaho, United States, collapses. Eleven people are killed as a result of flooding.[14] 1981 – The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five people in Los Angeles, California, have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognized cases of AIDS.
1989 – The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.