ON THIS DAY, AUGUST 25

325 Council of Nicaea adopts the Nicene Creed establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

1609 Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1718 Hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana and found the city of New Orleans.

1835 The first Great Moon Hoax article is published in The New York Sun, announcing the discovery of civilisation on the moon.

1914 The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is destroyed by the German army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.

1919 The first scheduled passenger service by airplane – Paris-London – begins.

1939 Britain and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion.

1940 The Royal Air Force launches its first raid on Berlin in retaliation for the German bombing of London the previous day.

1945 Chinese Communist Party members kill US intelligence officer John Birch – he is the Cold War’s first victim.

1958 Inventor Momofuku Ando markets the first package of instant noodles, in Japan.

1993 American student Amy Elizabeth Biehl, 26, is dragged from her car by a mob in Guguletu, Cape Town, and stabbed to death.

1998 A bomb explodes in the Planet Hollywood restaurant at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront killing two people and injuring 26.

2004 Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is arrested at his Cape Town home over a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.

2006 Hyperion, the world’s tallest living tree, a 700-800-year-old Redwood standing 115.55m, is discovered in Redwood National

and State Parks, California

2012 The Voyager 1 becomes the first manmade object to enter interstellar space.

2019 US astronaut Anne McClain becomes the first person to be investigated for a crime alleged to have been committed in space after being accused of illegally accessing a bank account from the International Space Station. She was cleared. | THE HISTORIAN