On This Day in History: November 5

A joyful sea turtle glides gracefully through warm ocean currents, surrounded by gentle water ripples and friendly sea creatures. Clustered around the turtle are branching coral reefs, blooming sea anemones, a cheerful clownfish, and a smiling starfish perched on the ocean floor, inviting toddlers and preschoolers to colour wide, welcoming ocean shapes.

Commemorated annually on November 5 since its official designation by the United Nations in 2015, World Tsunami Awareness Day honors the legendary 1854 Japanese story of 'Inamura-no-hi' (the burning of rice sheaves to alert villagers of an impending tsunami) while raising global awareness about early warning systems, coastal disaster readiness, and caring for ocean reefs and marine life.

A cheerful, smiling vintage steam locomotive chugs happily along glistening iron tracks winding through lush green hills and swaying palm trees. Playful billows of soft puffy smoke rise into the sunny sky as smiling school children wave excitedly from open passenger carriage windows while a grazing cow and chirping songbirds greet the train from the countryside.

On November 5, 1951, Indian Railways officially established the Central Railway zone, headquartered at the historic Victorian Gothic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) in Mumbai. This historic zone incorporated the pioneering Great Indian Peninsula Railway, which famously inaugurated India's very first passenger railway journey on April 16, 1853, between Bori Bunder and Thane, establishing one of the world's largest and most vital transportation networks.

A sturdy, rounded deep-sea exploration submarine navigates the mysterious ocean floor, casting bright dual beams of light across dramatic underwater volcanic vents and rocky abyssal trenches. Two articulated robotic arms carefully steady and unspool a heavily insulated underwater telecommunications cable onto the seabed, accompanied by curious floating jellyfish and friendly octopuses observing this marvel of human engineering.

In November 1856 (formalized November 5–6, 1856), American entrepreneur Cyrus West Field and British telegraph engineers founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company in London, initiating the historic transatlantic telegraph cable project. After overcoming extraordinary nautical and electrical challenges across thousands of miles of Atlantic ocean floor, permanent high-speed telegraph communication between North America and Europe was triumphantly established in 1866 using the immense steamship SS Great Eastern.

The majestic Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter spacecraft glides silently through interplanetary space high above the curved horizon of the Red Planet. Its wide three-panel solar array reflects sunlight, its gold-foil multi-layer insulation gleams, and its prominent parabolic high-gain antenna faces Earth, set against a magnificent cosmic panorama of distant spiral galaxies, Saturn with its rings, and shimmering star constellations.

On November 5, 2013, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), affectionately known as Mangalyaan, aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C25) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. Entering Martian orbit on September 24, 2014, India made history as the first nation in the world to achieve Mars orbit on its maiden attempt and the fourth space agency ever to reach the Red Planet, operating for over seven years to capture breathtaking global maps and study Mars's atmosphere.