| 5 August 1100 | England [administration] | William II Rufus' brother Henry is crowned king of England; he issues a charter of liberties and recalls Anselm as archbishop of Canterbury. |
| 5 August 1192 | England, Ayyubid Sultanate, Palestine [Crusades (1095–1272)] | King Richard I the Lionheart of England defeats Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria outside the Palestinian town of Jaffa. |
| 5 August 1435 | Aragon, Genoa, Italy, Milan, Naples, Spain, Holy Roman Empire [wars] | King Alfonso V of Aragon is defeated and captured by the Genoese in a naval battle off the island of Ponza. He is soon afterwards released, having made a treaty of alliance with Milan, in which his claim to the throne of Naples is recognized. |
| 5 August 1498 | France, Spain [treaties] | King Louis XII of France and Ferdinand of Aragon sign the Treaty of Marcoussis, which ends the effectiveness of the League of Venice. They begin to plan a Franco-Spanish partition of the kingdom of Naples. |
| 5 August 1587 | United Netherlands, Spanish Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire [Dutch Revolt (1598–1609)] | The Habsburg governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, captures the town of Sluys in the United Netherlands, completing his conquest of the south bank of the River Scheldt, while his adversaries the stadtholder (provincial executive officer) Count Maurice of Nassau and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, English lieutenant general in the Netherlands, quarrel and Leicester plans an assault on the estates of Holland. |
| 5 August 1772 | Poland, Prussia, Austria-HM, Russia [political events] | Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia engineers the First Partition of Poland, dividing one-third of Polish territory between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Prussia takes west Prussia (except Danzig, modern Gdansk) and Ermeland in the north, Austria takes Little Poland south of the Vistula, and Russia takes lands east of the Dvina and Dnieper rivers. |
| 5 August 1850 | France [births and deaths] | Guy de Maupassant, French short-story writer in the Naturalist school, born near Dieppe, France (–1893). |
| 5 August 1850 | UK, Australia [law and government] | The British Parliament passes the Australia Government Act, granting representative government to South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria (which is separated from New South Wales). |
| 5 August 1930 | [births and deaths] | Neil Armstrong, US astronaut and the first person to set foot on the Moon (1969), born in Wapakoneta, Ohio. |
| 5 August 1962 | USA [births and deaths] | Marilyn Monroe, US actor and sex symbol, dies in Los Angeles, California, from an overdose of sleeping pills (36). |
| 5 August 1963 | USA, USSR, UK, France, world [treaties] | The USA, USSR, and Britain sign a nuclear test-ban treaty, which is subsequently signed by 96 states, but not France, before coming into force on 1 October. |
| 5 August 1964 | Congo Republic [revolution] | Antigovernment rebels in the Congo Republic capture Stanleyville (now Kisangani), and declare the foundation of a People's Republic of the Congo on 7 August. |
| 5 August 1974 | USA [law and government] | The US president Richard Nixon admits complicity in the Watergate cover-up (concerning the attempted bugging of the opposition Democratic Party's campaign headquarters). |
| 5 August 1980 | Belgium [law and government] | The Belgian parliament passes a bill dividing the country into three autonomous linguistic regions. |
| 5 August 1993 | Sudan [political events] | The government of Sudan launches a major offensive against the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), displacing 100,000 people and threatening famine. |
| 5 August 2000 | England [births and deaths] | Alec Guinness, the English Oscar-winning actor and star of dozens of films including Bridge on the River Kwai and Star Wars, dies in Midhurst, England (86). |
