Celebrations Today – December 5
Holidays and observances
- Christian feast day:
- Bathtub Party Day (unofficial)
- Children’s Day (Suriname)
- Day of the Ninja (unofficial)
- Day of Military Honour – Battle of Moscow (Russia)
- Discovery Day (Haiti and Dominican Republic)
- International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development
- Klozum (Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands)
- Saint Nicholas’ Eve (Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Poland and the UK)
- The King Bhumibol Adulyadej Memorial Birthday (Thailand)
- Repeal Day (United States)
- World Soil Day
Celebrations Today – USA: December 5
National Sacher Torte Day
Bathtub Party Day
International Ninja Day
World Trick Shot Day – First Tuesday in December
International Volunteer Day
National Krampusnacht
National Blue Jeans Day
National Communicate With Your Kids Day
National Commute With Your Baby Day
National Repeal Day
World Soil Day
Today in US History: December 5
Love of Learning is the Guide of Life
Phi Beta Kappa motto
![William and Mary College [Williamsburg] Virginia](http://memory.loc.gov:8081/ammem/today/images/1205williammary.jpg)
William and Mary College [Williamsburg] Virginia,
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
On December 5, 1776, Phi Beta Kappa, America’s most prestigious undergraduate honor society, was founded. Organized by five students at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Phi Beta Kappa was the nation’s first Greek letter society. From 1776 to 1780, members met regularly at William and Mary to write, debate, and socialize. They planned the organization’s expansion and established the characteristics typical of American fraternities and sororities: an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, a badge and a seal, a special handclasp, and an elaborate initiation ritual.
When the Revolutionary War forced William and Mary to close in 1780, newly formed chapters at Harvard and Yale directed Phi Beta Kappa’s growth and development. By the time that the William and Mary chapter was revived in 1851, Phi Beta Kappa was represented at colleges throughout New England. By the end of the nineteenth century, the once secretive, exclusively male social group had dropped its oath of secrecy, opened its doors to women, and transformed itself into a national honor society dedicated to fostering and recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.
Williamsburg, Virginia…. Here the Burgesses Met; Royal Governors Dined; and the Phi Beta Kappa Society is said to have been Founded,
April 1943.
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Chicago, Illinois. Provident Hospital… Dr. E. V. Williams [left] was a Phi Beta Kappa at Kansas University,
March 1942.
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
In 1988 the organization changed its name to The Phi Beta Kappa Society, which today has over 270 chapters. Membership in the national organization is based on outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences. Approximately ten percent of the nation’s institutions of high learning have Phi Beta Kappa chapters–typically limited to students in the upper tenth of their graduating class. In 2008, the society counts seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices and former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton as members.
Phi Beta Kappa sponsors campus and community activities, fellowships, and service and literary awards. Since 1932, the society has published The American Scholar, a quarterly journal inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s 1837 Harvard lecture. The journal aspires to Emerson’s ideals of independent thinking, self-knowledge, and a commitment to world affairs as well as to books, history, and science.
- Search on Phi Beta Kappa in the American Memory collections The Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals and The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books to read various addresses, poems, and orations given by society members.
- American Memory contains thousands of photographs of campuses and college life. Search across the American Memory Pictorial collections on college to view dormitories, sporting events, class photos, and commencement ceremonies.
- See drawings and photographs of buildings that are part of William and Mary College by searching on that term in Built in America: Historic Building American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering, 1933-Present. See, for example, Brafferton Hall built in 1724 as the first permanent Indian school in the colonies, and the President’s House, attributed to Sir Christopher Wren.
- Search the Today in History Archive on college or university to find features on historic American schools including Columbia, Howard University, and Vassar College.
The Little Magician
Martin Van Buren, circa 1840-1862.
By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present
Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States and a founder of the Democratic Party, was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York. Just five feet six inches tall, with reddish-blond hair, Van Buren earned the nicknames “The Little Magician” and the “Red Fox of Kinderhook” for his legendary skill in political manipulation. Alongside his gift for politics, however, Van Buren harbored a sense of idealism that helped lead him, late in his career, to oppose the westward expansion of slavery.
Van Buren rose to national fame under the wing of Andrew Jackson, who defeated President John Quincy Adams in Adams’ 1828 bid for a second term. Before coming to Washington as a senator in 1821, Van Buren crafted the powerful New York political machine known as the “Albany Regency.” In 1825, he put his formidable political skills at Jackson’s disposal.
Having assembled the coalition that made possible “Old Hickory”‘s ascension to the presidency in 1828,Van Buren was rewarded with an appointment as secretary of state. The election, the first in which a candidate directly appealed for the popular vote, marked a turning point in American politics and confirmed the emergence of the Democratic Party as heir to the Jeffersonian Republicans.
When Jackson sought a second term in 1832, he chose Van Buren for vice president, and Van Buren was nominated at the Democrats’ first official national convention. On January 13, 1833, Jackson wrote a letter to his soon-to-be second-in-command reiterating his determination to stand firm in the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. The letter also reveals the president’s personal relationship with Van Buren, then his most trusted advisor. “I have recd. several letters from you which remain unanswered,” he begins:
You know I am a bad correspondent at any time–lately I have been indisposed by cold, & surrounded with the nullifiers of the South, & the Indians in the South, & West; that has occupied all my time, not leaving me a moment for private friendship, or political discussion with a friend.President Andrew Jackson to Vice-President-Elect Martin Van Buren,
January 13, 1833.
Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years
Letter, Andrew Jackson to Martin Van Buren discussing the nullification crisis, 13 January 1833. (Martin Van Buren Papers.)
Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years
In 1837, Van Buren succeeded Jackson in the White House. Almost immediately, the Panic of 1837 sent the national economy into a tailspin. Van Buren’s inability to alleviate the depression, along with his opposition to the annexation of Texas on grounds it would divide the nation over the expansion of slavery, led to his drubbing by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840. Van Buren retired to Lindenwald, his estate at Kinderhook.
In 1848, he agreed to run for president again on the Free Soil ticket, but was overwhelmingly defeated by Zachary Taylor. As one opposition Whig Party song spoofed him,
Come good Whigs listen to me, and some instruction learn,
While about the race of ’48 I spin you a little yarn,
First on the list stood Kinderhook, that fox so shrewd and sly,
Who swore he’d win the race, or else he’d know the reason why.Oh, Matty Van! you are a used-up man,
One thing is plain, o’er this land to reign,
Again you never can.The political race. Air,–“Dearest Maie.” [n. p.] [n. d.].
America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets
He died a prodigal Democrat at Lindenwald in 1862. At the time of his death, the political coalition between Northerners and Southerners that Van Buren had so skillfully assembled had been obliterated by civil war–but the Democratic Party that he helped to found endured to become the world’s oldest political party.
Martin Van Buren Residence, Kinderhook, New York, 1961.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955
Learn more about the life and times of Martin Van Buren:
- Explore national politics in the 1820s and 1830s. Search the collection Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Yearson Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John Calhoun or John Quincy Adams.
- Read Van Buren’s position on one of the burning topics of his day—the distribution of public lands. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 reports a speech that Van Buren made in the Senate in May 1826. Search on Van Buren to find this and other documents pertaining to his senatorial career.
- “A Time of Universal Prosperity and What Came of It” discusses the impact of the Panic of 1837 on Michigan citizens. This essay is part of Memorials of a Half-Century by Bela Hubbard. The complete text is available through Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910.
- Search on Van Buren in Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955 to find more photographs of the president’s Lindenwald estate. Author Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle at Lindenwald and is said to have gathered information there for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
- Search on Van Buren in An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera to find broadsides publicizing several episodes in Van Buren’s political career.
Today in History – December 5-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia