Today in History, 12/5

1360: The French Franc is created.
1484: Pope Innocent VIII issues the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the severest witch hunts in European history.
1766: In London, James Christie holds his first sale.
1775: At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1782: Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States is born.
1791: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna at age 35.
1831: Former US President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
1839: George Armstrong Custer is born.
1848: In a message before the U.S. Congress, US President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
1879: Clyde Cessna, airplane manufacturer, is born.
1890: Fritz Lang is born.
1901: Walt Disney is born.
1906: Otto Preminger is born.
1926: Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin premieres.
1932: Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.
1932: Little Richard is born.
1933: Prohibition in the United States ends as Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had outlawed alcohol in the United States).
1941: In the Battle of Moscow Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.
1955: The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL-CIO.
1956: Brian Backer is born. He played the nebbishy Mark Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
1978: The Soviet Union signs a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.