Making more than one post viewable

Hi, Newb here!

Following along with a tutorial which only gives script to display a single post. I have set up the posts in my sidebar.

<?php query_posts("post_per_page=1"); the_post(); ?>

<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
<h3><?php the_date(); ?></h3>
<p><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>
<hr/>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>
        <?php if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Sidebar Widgets')) : else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

How do I make say 5 posts show up? I have changed post_per_page=1 to post_per_page=5, but this doesn’t affect it… can anyone point me in the right direction?

Many thanks!