March 25

March 25 is the 84th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (85th in leap years). There are 281 days remaining.

Events

• 708 – Constantine is consecrated Pope.
• 1300 – Dante descends to the Inferno in The Divine Comedy
• 1306 – Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
• 1409 – The Council of Pisa opens.
• 1634 – The first settlers arrive in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).
• 1655 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christian Huygens.
• 1802 – The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and United Kingdom.
• 1807 – The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1821 – Greece declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence.
• 1865 – The "Claywater Meteorite" explodes just before reaching ground level in Vernon County, Wisconsin. Fragments having a combined mass of 1.5 kg are recovered.
• 1865 – American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
• 1894 – Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C..
• 1901 – At the five-day "Week of Nice" race in Nice, France, Mercedes wins its first racing victory.
• 1911 – In New York City the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire kills 146 garment workers.
• 1918 – The Belarusian National Republic was established.
• 1924 – Greece proclaims itself a republic.
• 1931 – The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
• 1939 – Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII.
• 1941 – Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.
• 1947 – A explosion in a coalmine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
• 1949 – The extensive deportation campaign was conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet authorities deported more than 92,000 people from Baltics to the remotest areas of the Soviet Union.
• 1955 – United States Customs seizes Allen Ginsberg's Howl as obscene.
• 1957 – The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
• 1960 – In London, United Kingdom, Jacqueline Boyer wins the fifth Eurovision Song Contest for France singing "Tom Pillibi".
• 1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. complete successfully their 4 day 50 mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery.
• 1969 – During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold a bed-in for peace in the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
• 1971 – Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight of Pakistan Army against East Pakistani civilians.
• 1972 – In Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, Vicky Leandros wins the seventeenth Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg singing "Après toi" (After you).
• 1975 – Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
• 1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
• 1990 – In New York City, a fire at an illegal social club called "Happy Land" kills 87.
• 1992 – Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station.
• 1995 – Ward Cunningham opens the first wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository.
• 1996 – An 81-day long standoff between the antigovernment group Montana Freemen and law enforcement in Jordan, Montana begins.
• 1996 – The EU's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (BSE).
• 2004 – Air Holland files for bankruptcy in response to unproven allegations of marijuana abuse by the their pilots.

Births

• 1252 – Conradin (d. 1268)
• 1541 – Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1587)
• 1741 – Jean Antoine Houdon, French sculptor, (d. 1828)
• 1863 – Simon Flexner, pathologist (d. 1946)
• 1867 – Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor, (d. 1957)
• 1868 – William Lockwood, English cricketer (d. 1932)
• 1873 – Rudolf Rocker, anarcho-syndicalist (d. 1958)
• 1881 – Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer, (d. 1945)
• 1881  – Mary Gladys Webb, writer, (d. 1927)
• 1886 – Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople, (d. 1972)
• 1901 – Ed Begley, American actor (d. 1970)
• 1908 – Helmut Käutner, actor and film director, (d. 1980)
• 1908  – David Lean, film director, (d. 1991)
• 1911 – Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, (d. 1967)
• 1914 – Norman Borlaug, plant breeder
• 1918 – Howard Cosell, attorney, lecturer, and sports journalist, (d. 1995)
• 1920 – Arthur Wint, Jamaican runner
• 1920 – Patrick Troughton, British actor (d. 1987)
• 1921 – Simone Signoret, French actress, (d. 1985)
• 1922 – Eileen Ford, fashion modeling agent
• 1925 – Flannery O'Connor, author (d. 1964)
• 1928 – Jim Lovell, astronaut
• 1932 – Gene Shalit, American film critic
• 1934 – Gloria Steinem, American feminist author
• 1938 – Hoyt Axton, musician, actor, (d. 1999)
• 1939 – Toni Cade Bambara, author (d. 1995)
• 1940 – Anita Bryant, entertainer, radical anti-homosexual activist
• 1942 – Aretha Franklin, American singer
• 1942  – Richard O'Brien, actor, writer
• 1943 – Paul Michael Glaser, American actor
• 1946 – Maurice Krafft, French vulcanologist (d. 1991)
• 1946 – Bonnie Bedelia, American actress
• 1947 – Elton John, English musician
• 1952 – Antanas Mockus, Colombian mathematician and politician
• 1956 – Matthew Garber, British actor (d. 1977)
• 1960 – Idy Chan Yuk-Lin, Hong Kong actress
• 1962 – Marcia Cross, American actress
• 1964 – Lisa Gay Hamilton, actress
• 1965 – Sarah Jessica Parker, American actress
• 1966 – Tom Glavine, baseball player
• 1967 – Debi Thomas, figure skater
• 1969 – Dale Davis, basketball player
• 1974 – Lark Voorhies, actress
• 1976 – Juvenile, rapper
• 1976  – Wladimir Klitschko, boxer
• 1989 – Alyson Michalka, actress

Deaths

• 752 – Pope Stephen II
• 1005 – King Kenneth III of Scotland (in battle)
• 1233 – King Afonso II of Portugal (b. 1185)
• 1458 – Marqués de Santillana, Spanish poet (b. 1398)
• 1736 – Nicholas Hawksmoor, architect
• 1751 – King Frederick I of Sweden (b. 1676)
• 1801 – Novalis, German poet (b. 1772)
• 1918 – Claude Debussy, French composer (b. 1862)
• 1951 – Eddie Collins, Baseball Hall of Famer (b. 1887)
• 1957 – Max Ophüls, director and writer (b. 1902)
• 1958 – Tom Brown, jazz musician (b. 1888)
• 1969 – Max Eastman, writer (b. 1883)
• 1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (b. 1906)
• 1980 – Roland Barthes, French literary critic and writer (b. 1915)
• 1980 – Walter Susskind, Czech conductor (b. 1913)
• 1988 – Robert Joffrey, dancer, teacher, and choreographer
• 1991 – Marcel Lefebvre, Roman Catholic leader
• 1992 – Nancy Walker, American actress
• 1995 – James Coleman, American sociologist
• 1995 – Kresimir Cosic, basketball player, (b. 1948)
• 1999 – Cal Ripken, Sr., baseball manager
• 2000 – Helen Martin, American actress
• 2002 – Kenneth Wolstenholme, British football commentator
• 2005 – Paul Hester, musician, (b. 1959)

Holidays and observances

• Annunciation – this is nine months before Christmas day.
• One of the four Irish Quarter days in the Irish calendar.
• Traditional date of the start of the new year in Britain, until the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752 (called Lady Day – see above).
• Greek Independence Day.
• Good Friday in 2005, 2016

External links

• BBC: On This Day

March 24 – March 26 – February 25 – April 25 — listing of all days