August 25

August 25 is the 237th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (238th in leap years), with 128 days remaining.

Events

• 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, was formed.
• 1580 – Battle of Alcantara. Spain defeats Portugal.
• 1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1718 – New Orleans, Louisiana is founded.
• 1825 – Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil.
• 1830 – Belgium revolts from the Netherlands
• 1835 – The New York Sun perpetrates The Great Moon Hoax.
• 1875 – Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel.
• 1910 – Yellow Cab is founded.
• 1912 – Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party is founded.
• 1916 – United States National Park Service is created.
• 1920 – Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, started on August 13, now ends. The Red Army is defeated.
• 1942 – Battle of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea
• 1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.
• 1946 – Ben Hogan wins PGA Championship.
• 1950 – President Harry Truman ordered the US Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
• 1960 – Games of the XVII Olympiad open in Rome.
• 1975 – Bruce Springsteen releases Born to Run, the classic album that would launch him to superstardom.
• 1980 – Microsoft announces their version of UNIX, Xenix.
• 1980 – The Broadway musical 42nd Street opened; the show's director, Gower Champion, died earlier that day.
• 1989 – Tadeusz Mazowiecki chosen as the first non-communist Prime Minister in Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft flies by Neptune.
• 1991 – Linus Torvalds first says in a post to the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he is working on a new free computer operating system.
• 2003 – the Tli Cho land claims agreement is signed between the Dogrib First Nations and the Canadian federal government in Rae-Edzo, Northwest Territories.
• 2003 – 52 killed in two Islamic terrorist bomb blasts in Mumbai, India.

Births

• 1530 – Ivan IV of Russia ("Ivan the Terrible") (d. 1584)
• 1635 – Sir Henry Morgan, privateer (d. 1688)
• 1724 – George Stubbs, British painter (d. 1806)
• 1767 – Antoine Louis Léon de Richebourg de Saint-Just, French revolutionary and writer (d. 1794)
• 1786 – King Ludwig I of Bavaria (d. 1868)
• 1796 – James Lick, California land baron (d. 1876)
• 1819 – Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Agency (d. 1884)
• 1836 – Bret Harte, author (d. 1902)
• 1841 – Emil Kocher, medical researcher (d. 1917)
• 1845 – King Ludwig II of Bavaria (d. 1886)
• 1850 – Charles Richet, scientist
• 1882 – Sean O'Kelly, President of Ireland 1945–59 (d. 1966)
• 1898 – Helmut Hasse, German mathematican
• 1900 – Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, scientist
• 1902 – Stefan Wolpe, composer (d. 1972)
• 1909 – Ruby Keeler, singer, actress (d. 1993)
• 1909  – Michael Rennie, actor (d. 1971)
• 1912 – Erich Honecker, head of state of East Germany (d. 1994)
• 1913 – Walt Kelly, American cartoonist (d. 1973)
• 1916 – Van Johnson, actor
• 1917 – Mel Ferrer, American actor
• 1918 – Leonard Bernstein, American conductor and composer (d. 1990)
• 1918  – Richard Greene, actor
• 1919 – George Wallace, Governor of Alabama (d. 1998)
• 1921 – Monty Hall, game show host
• 1921 – Brian Moore, Irish-born Canadian writer (d. 1999)
• 1927 – Althea Gibson, American tennis player (d. 2003)
• 1928 – Herbert Kroemer, German physicist
• 1929 – Gordon Sherwood, composer
• 1930 – Sir Sean Connery, Scottish actor
• 1933 – Regis Philbin, television host
• 1933  – Wayne Shorter, jazz musician
• 1933  – Tom Skerritt, actor
• 1935 – Charles Wright, American poet
• 1938 – David Canary, actor
• 1938  – Frederick Forsyth, author
• 1939 – John Badham, film director
• 1940 – José Van Dam, Belgian baritone
• 1941 – Marshall Brickman, screenwriter
• 1944 – Anthony Heald, actor
• 1946 – Rollie Fingers, baseball player
• 1947 – Anne Archer, actress
• 1949 – Martin Amis, novelist
• 1949  – John Savage, actor
• 1949  – Gene Simmons, bassist
• 1951 – Robert Joseph Glass, artist
• 1952 – Peter Wolf, singer and composer
• 1954 – Elvis Costello, musician
• 1958 – Tim Burton, film director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1961 – Billy Ray Cyrus, singer
• 1962 – Viv Campbell, guitarist (Def Leppard)
• 1964 – Maxim Kontsevich, Russian mathematician
• 1964  – Blair Underwood, actor
• 1968 – Rafet El Roman, singer, composer
• 1968  – Rachael Ray, cook and television host
• 1970 – Claudia Schiffer, German model
• 1972 – Marvin Harrison, American football player
• 1980 – Ryan Horn, writer, commentator

Deaths

• 1192 – Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy, in Acre (b. 1142)
• 1270 – Louis IX of France on crusade in Tunisia.
• 1774 – Niccolò Jommelli, composer
• 1822 – William Herschel, astronomer (b. 1738)
• 1867 – Michael Faraday, scientist
• 1900 – Friedrich Nietzsche – philosopher
• 1900 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, Japanese politician and prime minister (b. 1840)
• 1904 – Henri Fantin-Latour, painter
• 1908 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist
• 1925 – Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, WWI
• 1942 – George Edward Alexander Windsor, Duke of Kent
• 1945 – John Birch, soldier, missionary, first casualty of the Cold War
• 1967 – Stanley Bruce, eighth Prime Minister of Australia
• 1967  – Paul Muni, Academy Award winning actor
• 1967  – George Lincoln Rockwell, American Nazi Party leader
• 1971 – Ted Lewis, jazz musician, entertainer (b. 1890)
• 1979 – Stan Kenton, jazz musician, big band leader
• 1979 – Ray Eberle, jazz musician, big band leader
• 1980 – Gower Champion, dancer, actor, choreographer
• 1984 – Truman Capote, author
• 1984  – Waite Hoyt, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1899)
• 1985 – Samantha Smith, U.S. social activist, actress
• 1990 – Morley Callaghan, Canadian writer
• 2000 – Carl Barks, illustrator of Donald Duck
• 2001 – Aaliyah, singer (plane crash)
• 2002 – Dorothy Hewett, Australian poet, playwright and novelist

Holidays and observances

• Uruguay – National Day.
• Roman Empire – Opiconsivia held in honor of Ops.
• Philippines – National Heroes' Day.
• Australia – Claytonymas. Held in honour of Australian war heroes.

External links

• BBC: On This Day

August 24 – August 26 – July 25 – September 25 — listing of all days