October 25Birthdays & History

On this day: October 25 in history

Oldest first. Tap a year to see it on the World Chronicle timeline.

1. 473Emperor Leo I acclaims his grandson Leo II as Caesar of the East Roman Empire.Europe
2. 1147Reconquista: After a siege of four months, crusader knights conquer Lisbon.Europe
3. 1147Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.Middle EastEurope
4. 1415Hundred Years' War: Henry V of England, with his lightly armoured infantry and archers, defeats the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt.Europe
5. 1616Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.EuropeOceania
6. 1747War of the Austrian Succession: A British fleet under Admiral Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre.Europe
7. 1760King George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather George II.Europe
8. 1809Golden Jubilee of George III is celebrated in Britain as he begins the fiftieth year of his reign.Europe
9. 1812War of 1812: The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.North AmericaEurope
10. 1822Greek War of Independence: The First Siege of Missolonghi begins.Europe
11. 1854The Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War. It is soon memorialized in verse as The Charge of the Light Brigade.Europe
12. 1861The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.North America
13. 1868The Uspenski Cathedral, designed by Aleksey Gornostayev, is inaugurated in Helsinki, Finland.Europe
14. 1875Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23 premieres in Boston, Massachusetts, with Benjamin Johnson Lang as conductor and Hans von Bülow as soloist.North America
15. 1911The Xinhai Revolution spreads to Guangzhou, where the Qing general Fengshan is assassinated by the Chinese Assassination Corps.Asia
16. 1917Old Style date of the October Revolution in Russia.Europe
17. 1920After 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies.Europe
18. 1924The Zinoviev letter, which Zinoviev himself denied writing, is published in the Daily Mail; the Labour party would later blame this letter for the Conservatives' landslide election win four days later.Europe
19. 1927The Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314.EuropeLatin America
20. 1932George Lansbury became the leader of the opposition British Labour Party.Europe
21. 1940Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.AfricaNorth America
22. 1944World War II: Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.Europe
23. 1944World War II: The final attempt of the Imperial Japanese Navy to win the war climaxes at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.Asia
24. 1944World War II: The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine ace of the war) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.North America
25. 1945Fifty years of Japanese administration of Taiwan formally ends when the Republic of China assumes control.AsiaAsia
26. 1949The Battle of Guningtou in the Taiwan Strait begins.Asia
27. 1962Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.Latin AmericaEurope
28. 1968Soyuz 2 is launched.Europe
29. 1968A Fairchild F-27 crashes into Moose Mountain while on approach to Lebanon Municipal Airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire, killing 32 people.Middle EastNorth America
30. 1971The People's Republic of China replaces the Republic of China at the United Nations.Asia
31. 1973Egypt and Israel accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 339.Middle East
32. 1980Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude.World
33. 1983The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.North AmericaLatin America
34. 1989The first leg of the 1989 Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira is held at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal.Europe
35. 1990The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic declares its sovereignty from the Soviet Union.AsiaEurope
36. 1995A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.North America
37. 1997After a civil war, Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaims himself President of the Republic of the Congo.Africa
38. 1999A Learjet 35 crashes in Mina near Aberdeen, South Dakota, killing all six people on board, including PGA golfer Payne Stewart and golf course designer Bruce Borland.North America
39. 2001Microsoft releases Windows XP, which becomes one of Microsoft's most successful operating systems.North America
40. 2009The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kill 155 and wound at least 721.Middle East
41. 2010A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes off Indonesia's Mentawai Islands, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 400 people.Asia
42. 2023A mass shooting occurs in two locations in Lewiston, Maine. 18 people are killed and 13 more injured.North America

Source: Wikipedia "October 25" / CC BY-SA 4.0