| 137401 | December 5 | Event | 633 – Fourth Council of Toledo takes place. |
| 137402 | December 5 | Event | 1082 – Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona is assassinated. |
| 137403 | December 5 | Event | 1408 – Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reaches Moscow. |
| 137404 | December 5 | Event | 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany. |
| 137405 | December 5 | Event | 1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). |
| 137406 | December 5 | Event | 1496 – King Manuel I of Portugal issues a decree of expulsion of "heretics" from the country. |
| 137407 | December 5 | Event | 1757 – Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick II of Prussia leads Prussian forces to a decisive victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. |
| 137408 | December 5 | Event | 1766 – In London, James Christie holds his first sale. |
| 137409 | December 5 | Event | 1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 137410 | December 5 | Event | 1815 – Foundation of Maceió, Brazil. |
| 137411 | December 5 | Event | 1831 – Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives. |
| 137412 | December 5 | Event | 1847 – Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. senate. |
| 137413 | December 5 | Event | 1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California. |
| 137414 | December 5 | Event | 1865 – Chincha Islands War: Peru allies with Chile against Spain. |
| 137415 | December 5 | Event | 1876 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278 people in Brooklyn, New York. |
| 137416 | December 5 | Event | 1916 – British premier H. H. Asquith resigns from his post. |
| 137417 | December 5 | Event | 1920 – Dimitrios Rallis forms a government in Greece. |
| 137418 | December 5 | Event | 1931 – Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was destroyed by an order of Joseph Stalin. |
| 137419 | December 5 | Event | 1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa. |
| 137420 | December 5 | Event | 1933 – Prohibition in the United States ends: Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment. (This overturned the 18th Am |
| 137421 | December 5 | Event | 1934 – Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attack Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city. |
| 137422 | December 5 | Event | 1936 – The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic is established as a full Union Republic of the USSR. |
| 137423 | December 5 | Event | 1941 – World War II: In the Battle of Moscow, Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre. |
| 137424 | December 5 | Event | 1941 – World War II: Great Britain declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania. |
| 137425 | December 5 | Event | 1943 – World War II: Allied air forces begin attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow. |
| 137426 | December 5 | Event | 1945 – Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle. |
| 137427 | December 5 | Event | 1952 – Great Smog: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow. |
| 137428 | December 5 | Event | 1955 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL–CIO. |
| 137429 | December 5 | Event | 1955 – E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. |
| 137430 | December 5 | Event | 1957 – Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia. |