Template:Selected anniversaries/April 5
1523: Cryptographer and diplomat Blaise de Vigenère (nonfiction) born. The Vigenère cipher will be misattributed to him; Vigenère himself will devise a different, stronger cipher.
1827: Surgeon and scientist Joseph Lister born. He will pioneer antiseptic surgery, performing the first antiseptic surgery in 1865.
1869: Physicist, mathematician, and engineer Sergey Chaplygin born. He will be known for mathematical formulas such as Chaplygin's equation, and for a hypothetical substance in cosmology called Chaplygin gas, named after him.
1870: Adventurer Wallace War-Heels publishes autobiography.
1900: Mathematician, economist, and academic Joseph Louis François Bertrand dies. He worked in the fields of number theory, differential geometry, probability theory, economics and thermodynamics.
1910: Havelock and Nikola Tesla share Nobel Prize in Physics for research into electrical field modulation and data transmission.
1976: Businessman, investor, aviator, film director, and philanthropist Howard Hughes dies. He was known during his lifetime as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world.