Template:Selected anniversaries/August 5
1816: The British Admiralty dismisses Francis Ronalds's new invention of the first working electric telegraph as "wholly unnecessary", preferring to continue using the semaphore.
1901: "Fightin'" Bert Russell agrees to fight three rounds of bare-knuckled boxing at World Peace Conference.
1910: Mathematician Julius Petersen dies. His famous paper Die Theorie der regulären graphs is a fundamental contribution to modern graph theory.
1914: In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed.
1921: New version of Bernoulli family tree powered by cellular automata.
1920: Artist George Tooker born. His paintings will depict his subjects naturally, as in a photograph, but the images will use flat tones, an ambiguous perspective, and alarming juxtapositions to suggest an imagined or dreamed reality.
1981: Musician and alleged math criminal Skip Digits begins North American tour.