| 5 December 1560 | France [political events] | Following the death of King Francis II of France, he is succeeded by his ten-year-old brother, Charles IX. Their mother, Catherine de' Medici, becomes regent and foils the triumvirate of Francis, duke of Guise, Anne, duke of Montmorency, and Jacques d'Albon, seigneur de St André, when she pursues a policy of religious conciliation. |
| 5 December 1791 | Austria [births and deaths] | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer, considered one of the world's greatest composers, dies in Vienna, Austria (35). |
| 5 December 1792 | USA [elections] | George Washington is re-elected president of the USA. John Adams, the runner-up, returns to the office of vice-president. |
| 5 December 1812 | France, Russian Empire [Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)] | Hearing news of the coup against him, the French emperor Napoleon I leaves his troops under the command of Marshal Joachim Murat in Russia and sets out for Paris (where he arrives on 18 December). The remnants of his Grande Armée struggle back to France, a bare 10,000 effective troops remaining from the 500,000 who set out for Moscow. |
| 5 December 1848 | Prussia [law and government] | The Prussian National Assembly is dissolved and a constitution is imposed that includes universal male suffrage, but the ultimate authority of King Frederick Wilhelm IV is maintained. |
| 5 December 1870 | France [births and deaths] | Alexandre Dumas (père), French novelist best known for The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers (both 1844), dies in Puys, France (68). |
| 5 December 1890 | Austria, USA [births and deaths] | Fritz Lang, Austrian-born US film director who makes Metropolis, born in Vienna, Austria (–1976). |
| 5 December 1901 | [births and deaths] | Walt Disney, US motion-picture producer and creator of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and other characters, born in Chicago, Illinois (–1966). |
| 5 December 1901 | [births and deaths] | Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and philosopher who introduced the uncertainty principle into quantum mechanics, born in Würzburg, Germany (–1976). |
| 5 December 1905 | United Kingdom [administration] | Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman forms a Liberal ministry in Great Britain with Sir Edward Grey as foreign secretary, Herbert Asquith as chancellor of the Exchequer, and Richard Haldane as war secretary. |
| 5 December 1917 | Germany, Russia [treaties] | German and Russian delegates sign an armistice at Brest-Litovsk (in modern Belarus). |
| 5 December 1920 | Greece [political events] | A plebiscite in Greece following the death of King Alexander favours the return of the former king, Constantine, who abdicated under Allied pressure in 1917. On 19 December he returns to Greece. |
| 5 December 1926 | [births and deaths] | Claude Monet, French Impressionist painter, dies in Giverny, France (87). |
| 5 December 1941–5 January 1942 | USSR, Germany [World War II (1939–45)] | Soviet armies of the Northwest, Volkhov, and Kalinin fronts, reinforced by units from Siberia, launch a counteroffensive north and south of Moscow to relieve pressure from the German Army Group Centre's advance on the Soviet capital. |
| 5 December 1956 | Egypt, UK, France [wars] | British and French forces begin their withdrawal from Egypt and the Suez Crisis there, completing their evacuation on 22 December. |
| 5 December 1976 | Central African Republic [law and government] | Jean-Bédel Bokassa, head of state of the Central African Republic, proclaims his country an empire and himself its emperor. |
| 5 December 1996 | USA [political events] | Madeleine Albright becomes the first female US secretary of state. |
| 5 December 2000 | Kenya [anthropology] | French and Kenyan scientists announce that they have unearthed the fossilized remains of humankind's earliest known ancestor dating back 6 million years in Kenya. Christened ‘Millennium Man’, the find predates previous discoveries by more than 1.5 million years. |
| 5 December 2005 | UK [social legislation] | In the UK, the Civil Partnership Act comes into force, enabling same-sex couples to obtain legal recognition of their relationship and granting them new rights and responsibilities in areas such as employment, pensions and inheritance. |
| 5 December 2006 | [space exploration] | The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveils plans to build a permanent manned base on the Moon within 20 years, which will be used for missions to Mars and for monitoring the Earth. |
