Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 5:
1945 – First flight of Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first combat jet.
1953 – Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) died after three decades in power.
1953 – Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin; best known for his orchestral fairy tale “Peter and the Wolf”.
1993 – Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was banned for life after he failed a second dope test five years after his exit in disgrace from the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
2000 – Israel decided to pull its troops out of Lebanon by July, signalling that the withdrawal would take place even without a peace deal with Syria.
2005 – Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrene held in Iraq arrives in Rome.
2005 – Royals watch benefit rugby union match raising funds for UN World Food Programme.
2007 – Car bomb strikes Baghdad’s bookseller’s district, killing 26 people.
2010 – Grateful Dead memorabilia exhibit opens in New York.
2013 – Former Venezuela President Hugo Chavez dies.
2017 – Iraqi forces launch push into Mosul’s Old City.
