October 5 is the 278th day of the year (279th in Leap years). There are 87 days remaining. It is also the most populous birthday of the year statistically.
1947 - In the first televised White House address, President Harry S Truman urged Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Sundays to help starving people in other countries.
1966 - Near Detroit, Michigan a sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor, killing three workers. The radiation was contained.
1990 - After one hundred and fifty years, ten months and two days, The Heraldbroadsheet newspaper in Melbourne, Australia is published for the last time as a separate newspaper. Founded in 1840 as The Port Phillip Herald, it is merged with its morning tabloid sister paper The Sun News Pictorial and the first issue of the new Herald-Sun, described by owner Rupert Murdoch as "The world's first 24-hour newspaper" with morning and afternoon editions is published on the 8th.
1991 - An Indonesian military transport crashes after takeoff from Jakarta killing 137