NOW & THEN
25 AUGUST
1499: The Turkish fleet defeated the Venetians at the Battle of Sapienza.
1537: The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, was formed.
1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1768: Captain James Cook departed from Plymouth on his first voyage, on board the Endeavour, bound for the Pacific Ocean
1814: Washington DC was burned and the White House destroyed by British forces.
1830: The Belgian Revolution began.
1837: Henry William Crawford patented a process for producing galvanised iron.
1875: Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel without the use of artificial aids.
1900: Writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, playing for MCC against London County, clean bowled WG Grace.
1910: Yellow Cab taxicab company was founded.
1916: The United States National Park Service was created.
1919: The world’s first scheduled air flights began, between London and Paris.
1928: Anfield’s famous Kop terracing at Liverpool’s football ground was opened. It was most likely named after the Battle of Spion Kop in the Boer War. The word “kopje” means small hill.
1933: The Diexi earthquake struck Mao County, Sichuan, China and killed 9,000 people.
1944: Paris was liberated by the Allies.
1950: United States President Harry Truman ordered the army to seize control of the nation’s railways to avert a strike.
1960: The 17th Olympic Games opened in Rome, at which Briton Anita Lonsbrough won gold in the 200 metre breaststroke. .
1964: Kenneth Kaunda elected Zambia’s first president.
1978: The Shroud of Turin went on show for the first time at St John’s Cathedral in Turin.
1980: Zimbabwe joined the United Nations.
1985: Pop singer Michael Jackson paid £25 million for an ATV catalogue of music which included copyright of 5,000 songs, many by the Beatles.
1985: A re-enactment of the
Battle of Edgehill by the Sealed Knot Society turned into the “real thing”, and Warwick General Hospital filled up with costumed Cavaliers and Roundheads waiting for treatment of battle scars.
1989: The spacecraft Voyager, completing its 12-year voyage to Neptune, sent back pictures of Triton, its moon, and revealed two additional moons previously unknown to scientists.
1991: Belarus declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
1997: Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, was convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.
2010: A woman who was caught on CCTV dropping an unsuspecting cat into a wheelie bin, sparking a national outcry, said she was “profoundly sorry” for the stunt.
BIRTHDAYS
GENE SIMMONS
US rock musician (Kiss), 71
Martin Amis, British author, 71; Tim Burton, US film director, 62; Sir Sean Connery, Edinburghborn film actor, 90; Elvis Costello OBE, pop singer, 66; Billy Ray Cyrus, singer, 59; Frederick Forsyth CBE, novelist, 82; Howard Jacobson, British novelist, 78.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1530 Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia; 1819 Allan Pinkerton, Glasgow-born founder of the Chicago-based detective agency that bore his name; 1909 Ruby Keeler, actress; 1916 Van Johnson, film actor; 1917 Mel Ferrer, actor and director; 1918 Leonard Bernstein, composer-conductor; 1918 Richard Greene, actor; 1923 Dorothy Dunnett, novelist and painter.
Deaths: 1688 Sir Henry Morgan, buccaneer; 1776 David Hume, philosopher and historian; 1819 James Watt, engineer and inventor; 1822 Sir William Herschel, astronomer who discovered Uranus; 1867 Michael Faraday, physicist and founder of the science of electromagnetism; 1900 Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher; 1907 Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, novelist and poet; 1984 Truman Capote, author; 2012 Neil Armstrong, astronaut