1. On December 5th, 1941, the Papago Park prisoner-of-war camp was opened in what is now Phoenix, Arizona. The camp housed around 2,000 German and Italian prisoners during World War II.

2. In 1895, the first post office in the town of Gilbert, Arizona was established on December 5th. The town was named for William "Bobby" Gilbert, one of the first settlers in the area.

3. On December 5th, 1975, the Utah-based Mountain Bell Telephone Company introduced a touch-tone phone service to Phoenix, replacing rotary dial phones. This allowed callers to quickly press buttons instead of having to rotate a dial for each number.

4. In 1879, the town of Tombstone, Arizona was incorporated on December 5th. Known for the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone was a thriving mining town during the late 19th century.

5. December 5th, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. The dam, located northeast of Phoenix, was the first major project of the federal Reclamation Service, now known as the Bureau of Reclamation. The dam created a reservoir that supplied water to the growing Phoenix metropolitan area.