The Five Color Theorem Doodling on a map of England in 1852, Francis Guthrie noticed that only four colors were needed to color the counties. He conjectured that any map could be colored with only four colors. Several mathematicians tried and failed to prove this; notably in 1879 Kempe published a proof and only in 1890 was the flaw found by Heawood. This four color conjecture evaded a proof until 1972, when Appel and Haken gave a proof that required a computer. While there is as yet no Human readable proof, Kempe's argument suffices to prove that five color suffice, and this gives a flavor of known proofs of the four color theorem. I will sketch this history and prove the five color theorem, and then discuss the coloring theorem for other surfaces (torus, projective plane, Klein bottle...), time permitting