Template:Selected anniversaries/October 5

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  1607: Assassins sent by Pope Paul V attempt to kill Venetian statesman and scientist Paolo Sarpi, who survives fifteen stiletto thrusts.

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  1713: Philosopher, art critic, and writer Denis Diderot born. He will be a prominent figure during the Enlightenment, serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

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  1750: Maria Gaetana Agnesi receives a response from Pope Benedict XIV on the publication of her book, Instituzioni Analitiche, a two volume presentation covering algebra, calculus and differential equations. The pope sends her a gold medal, a wreath laid with precious stones and named her honorary professor at the University of Bologna.

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  1910: Mathematician Nathan Jacobson born. He will conduct research on the structure theory of rings without finiteness conditions--a subject closely related to the theory of algebras--which will transform the approach to classical results and break ground for solutions to problems inaccessible by previous methods.

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  1975: Six Seconds to Hell is "a reasonably accurate depiction of events as I experienced them," says art critic and alleged supervillain The Eel.

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  1976: Viking program: The Viking 2 orbiter primary mission ends at the beginning of solar conjunction. The extended mission will commence on 14 December 1976 after solar conjunction.

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  1985: Mathematician Karl Menger dies. He worked on mathematics of algebras, algebra of geometries, curve and dimension theory, game theory, and social sciences.

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  1985: Writer and crime-fighter Isaac Asimov publishes Two Plus Two Opens the Door, an introduction to Gnomon algorithm functions for children, which will influence a generation of mathematicians.

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  1985: Mathematician and statistician Harald Cramér dies. He helped found probability theory as a branch of mathematics, writing in 1926: "The probability concept should be introduced by a purely mathematical definition, from which its fundamental properties and the classical theorems are deduced by purely mathematical operations."

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  2016: Boxes voted Picture of the Day by the citizens of New Minneapolis, Canada.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars celebrates the forty-first anniversary of the end of the Viking 2 orbiter's primary mission, at the beginning of the solar conjunction.