Explore 5 October

Explore 5 October: the women of Paris march on Versailles, Chief Joseph surrenders, Portugal becomes a republic, Chileans vote no to Pinochet, and James Bond and the Beatles make their debuts on the same day. Meet Denis Diderot, Václav Havel and Kate Winslet, born on this date.

This day through time →11 verified events across 4 eras

⌛11Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙8Born
Today ✦4Lives
Remembered ◉1Firsts &
Discoveries ♫2Culture
Stories ☉2Observances

The women of Paris set off for Versailles, in a contemporary print of 1789.

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1789

The women of Paris march on Versailles

On 5 October 1789, angered by the price and scarcity of bread and by reports of a lavish banquet for the king’s guards at the palace, thousands of Parisian women, many from the city’s markets, marched through the rain to the palace of Versailles. National Guardsmen followed them.

Early the next morning part of the crowd forced its way into the palace. Louis XVI promised bread and agreed to go to Paris, and that afternoon the royal family left Versailles for the Tuileries, escorted by the crowd. The king was now effectively a prisoner of the Revolution.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Château de Versailles: Versailles at the heart of the French Revolution, 1789 ↗

A republican rally in Lisbon on 1 May 1907, three years before the revolution.

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1910

Portugal becomes a republic

On the morning of 5 October 1910 the Portuguese Republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon’s city hall, after a revolution that had begun the day before. Armed civilians, soldiers and sailors on warships in the Tagus had risen against the monarchy, led by the republican activist António Machado Santos.

King Manuel II, only 20, escaped on the royal yacht to Gibraltar and then to England, where he lived in exile until his death in 1932. Portugal marks 5 October as Republic Day.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: History of Portugal, the First Republic, 1910-26 ↗

Augusto Pinochet hands power to the elected president, Patricio Aylwin, in March 1990.

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Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional - Chile · CC BY-SA 3.0 clResized and cropped for display.

1988

Chileans vote no to Pinochet

On 5 October 1988 Chileans voted in a plebiscite on whether General Augusto Pinochet, in power since the 1973 coup, should rule for another eight years. The ‘No’ campaign won 54.7% of the valid votes against 43% for ‘Yes’.

Declassified US documents show that Pinochet had contingency plans to overturn a defeat, but members of his own regime refused to go along. The result led to free presidential and parliamentary elections in 1989, and Pinochet handed over the presidency to Patricio Aylwin in March 1990.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Memoria Chilena (National Library of Chile): The plebiscite of 5 October 1988 ↗

Chief Joseph, photographed by Edward S. Curtis in 1903.

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Edward S. Curtis / Adam Cuerden · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1877

Chief Joseph surrenders in the Bear Paw Mountains

On 5 October 1877, after a five-day siege in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, forty miles short of the Canadian border, Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles. For more than three months his band of about 700 Nez Perce, fewer than 200 of them fighting men, had outmanoeuvred pursuing US troops across roughly 1,000 miles of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

More than 200 of his people had died. His surrender speech, ending ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever’, became one of the most quoted in American history. The survivors were sent into exile rather than home to their valley.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: National Park Service: Bear Paw Battlefield ↗

♙

PEOPLE

Born Today

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Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1713

Denis Diderot

French philosopher of the Enlightenment and chief editor of the Encyclopédie.

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Abraham Bogardus / Adam Cuerden · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1829

Chester A. Arthur

21st president of the United States, who signed the Pendleton Act reforming the civil service.

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Not credited; presumably a Frères Lumière photo · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1864

Louis Lumière

French inventor who, with his brother Auguste, created the Cinématographe and held the first public film screenings.

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Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1902

Ray Kroc

American businessman who built McDonald’s into a worldwide fast-food chain.

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Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

Born 1936

Václav Havel

Czech playwright and dissident who led the Velvet Revolution and became president of Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic.

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International Monetary Fund Photograph/Stephen Jaffe · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Born 1951

Bob Geldof

Irish musician who organised Band Aid and Live Aid to raise money for famine relief.

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Michael Miller · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Born 1965

Mario Lemieux

Canadian ice hockey star who led the Pittsburgh Penguins to two Stanley Cups.

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Colleen Sturtevant · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.

Born 1975

Kate Winslet

English actress of Titanic and an Academy Award winner for The Reader.

◉

IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The STS-41G crew. Marc Garneau stands second from the right.

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NASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1984

The first Canadian in space

On 5 October 1984 the space shuttle Challenger lifted off on mission STS-41G with Marc Garneau aboard as payload specialist, making him the first Canadian in space. He carried out ten Canadian experiments in space technology, space science and life sciences.

The flight set other records too: seven crew, the largest to that date, and the first with two women, Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan, who became the first American woman to walk in space. Garneau flew twice more and later became a Canadian government minister.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Canadian Space Agency: Mission STS-41G, first Canadian in space ↗

♫

MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney with their producer George Martin at Abbey Road, 1966.

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Capitol Records · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1962

James Bond and the Beatles make their debuts

5 October 1962 was a remarkable day for British popular culture. In London the first James Bond film, Dr. No, starring Sean Connery and based on Ian Fleming’s novel, had its world premiere at the London Pavilion; the date is now celebrated as Global James Bond Day.

On the same day Parlophone released the Beatles’ first single, ‘Love Me Do’, backed with ‘P.S. I Love You’. It reached number 17 in the British charts. Within little more than a year Beatlemania had swept Britain and was about to reach America.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: 007.com (EON Productions): Dr. No ↗

The six Pythons in Tunisia in 1978: John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.

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Distributed by Arista Records (Q664167) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

1969

Monty Python’s Flying Circus is first broadcast

The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, ‘Whither Canada?’, was shown on BBC1 on the night of 5 October 1969. It mixed sketches, parodies of television and Terry Gilliam’s cut-out animations, and included ‘The Funniest Joke in the World’.

The series ran until 1974 and changed television comedy, with its surreal humour and sketches that ended without punchlines. Repeats on American public television built a huge following in the United States, and the team went on to make films including Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Monty Python (official site): Monty Python’s Flying Circus, series 1 ↗

✦

LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

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Nadar / Adam Cuerden · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Died 1880

Jacques Offenbach

German-born French composer of operettas, including Orpheus in the Underworld with its famous can-can.

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Photographie de presse de l'agence Meurisse · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Died 1918

Roland Garros

French aviator from Réunion who made the first non-stop flight across the Mediterranean, in 1913.

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The original uploader was C. Goemans at German Wikipedia. · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Died 2004

Maurice Wilkins

New Zealand-born physicist whose X-ray studies of DNA won him a share of the 1962 Nobel Prize.

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Matthew Yohe · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Died 2011

Steve Jobs

Co-founder of Apple, who launched the Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone.

☉

AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

Annual

World Teachers’ Day

World Teachers’ Day on 5 October marks the anniversary of the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers, adopted on 5 October 1966, the only international standard dedicated to the teaching profession. 2026 is its 60th anniversary.

Source: UNESCO: World Teachers’ Day ↗

A republican rally in Lisbon, 1907.

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Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Annual