history at glance
TODAY is Friday, August 25, the 237th day of 2017. There are 128 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1939 – The United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion by a foreign power. 1942 – World War II: Battle of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. 1942 – World War II: second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. A Japanese naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal is turned-back by an Allied air attack, losing one destroyer and one transport sunk, and one light cruiser heavily damaged. 1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies. 1945 – Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party kill US intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War. 1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. 1950 – President Harry Truman orders the US Army to seize
control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike. 1961 – President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigns after just seven months in power, initiating a political crisis that culminates in a military coup in 1964. 1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell is assassinated. 1981 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to
Saturn 1988 – The Chiado area in Lisbon is partially destroyed by a
fire. 1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time. 1989 – Mayumi Moriyama becomes Japan’s first female
Cabinet Secretary. 1991 – Belarus gains its independence from the Soviet Union 1991 – The Battle of Vukovar begins. An 87-day siege of a Croatian city by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August–November, during the Croatian War of Independence 1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will
become Linux. 1997 – Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, is
convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall. 2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space
becoming the first man-made object to do so.