April 5

• April 5, 1242
  At the Battle on the Ice the Republic of Novgorod under 20-year-old Prince Alexander Nevsky defeat the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights halting the Northern Crusades directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians
• April 5, 1462
  Ivan III becomes the Grand Prince of Moscow starting the uniting Russia
• April 5, 1614
  American Indian princess Pocahontas, daughter of chief Powhatan, marries English Jamestown colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, bringing a temporary peace between the English settlers and the Algonquians
• April 5, 1632
  The Swedish and Imperial armies exchange cannon fire for six hours, killing 2000 of the Swedish force, and 3000 of the Imperial force. Tilly is fatally wounded; Maximilian and the army escape during the night to Ingolstadt
• April 5, 1648
  Spanish troops and feudal barons struck down people's uprising in Naples
• April 5, 1722
  Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer sent to find Terra Australis, discovers on Easter Sunday a Polynesian Island 1400 miles from the coast of South America and names it Easter Island
• April 5, 1762
  British take Grenada, West Indies, from French
• April 5, 1768
  The world's oldest English-speaking chamber of commerce forms in New York City, New York
• April 5, 1794
  Georges Danton, French revolutionary leader, is guillotined along with Marie-Jean Herault de Sechelles, French author, politician, and Camille Desmoulins, popular journalist during French Reign of Terror
• April 5, 1795
  Treaty of Basel between Prussia and France marks end of First Coalition in French Revolutionary Wars
• April 5, 1856
  Booker T. Washington, an African-American educator, is born in Franklin County, Virginia
• April 5, 1933
  United States President Franklin Roosevelt issues Executive Order 6102, requiring public to turn in gold certificates, bullion, and coins for placement in the Federal Reserve
• April 5, 1939
  Membership in Hitler Youth, the youth organization of the Nazi Party, becomes obligatory in Germany
• April 5, 1951
  American communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for espionage and transmitting nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, becoming the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during the Cold War
• April 5, 1974
  World's tallest building, the World Trade Center opens in New York City