Aug 25 in History
1609 — Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1804 — Alicia Thornton, 22, challenges her neighbour and brother-in-law, Captain Flint, to a four-mile horse race at Knavesmire in York, England. In the final mile, her horse’s saddle-girths loosen, her side-saddle slides sideways and she has to stop. In 1805 she becomes the first woman to win a match race, against Frank Buckle, and remains the only woman victor listed by the Jockey Club until 1943.
1830 — Invigorated by French composer Daniel Auber’s opera “The Mute Girl of Portici” (ironically organised as a birthday celebration for King Willem I of the Netherlands), the audience in the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium, pour onto the streets chanting patriotic slogans and taking over government buildings. It develops into a full-blown uprising and a declaration of independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands on October 4.
1875 — Captain Matthew Webb, 27, becomes the first person to complete the swim across the English Channel, from Dover to Calais, fighting a strong tidal stream, strong wind, rough sea and painful jellyfish sting. He covers 64km in 21 hours and 45 minutes.
1914 — The invading German army destroy the library of the Catholic University of Leven, Belgium. The historic building, 300,000 books and an untold number of manuscripts are lost, including irreplaceable medieval and renaissance treasures.
1933 — A magnitude 7.3 earthquake destroys the town of Diexi, Mao County, Sichuan, China, and surrounding villages, killing about 9,000 people.
1991 — Belarus declares its independence from the USSR.
2000 — Former Serbian president Ivan Stambolic, 63, disappears. In 2003 his body (executed with two shots) is found in a pit in Mount Fruška Gora. In 2005 (then president) Slobodan Miloševic’s paramilitary commander, his secret-police chief and five others are convicted and sentenced for the murder.
2001 — American singer Aaliyah (Haughton), 22, and eight other people are killed when their overloaded small plane crashes 60m from the end of the runway at Marsh Harbour Airport, Abaco Islands, Bahamas.
2004 — Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is arrested at his Cape Town home and charged under SA’s anti-mercenary laws in connection with a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. He pleads guilty on January 13 2005, admits to paying $275,000 (about R1.8m), but claims he thought it was for an air ambulance service. He is fined R3m and given a four-year suspended sentence.