Historical EventsToday: 25 September

Events

• 303 - On a voyage preaching the gospel, Saint Fermin of Pamplona is beheaded in Amiens, France.


• 1066 - The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Anglo-Saxon era.


• 1396 - Ottoman Emperor Bayezid I defeats a Christian army at the Battle of Nicopolis.


• 1513 - Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached what would be known as the Pacific Ocean.


• 1555 - The Peace of Augsburg is signed in Augsburg by Charles V and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League.


• 1690 - "Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick", the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time.


• 1789 - The U.S. Congress passes twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights. Only the Bill of Rights were ratified at the time, while the other two were proposed by James Madison but not ratified. In 1992, the Congressional Compensation Amendment was ratified as the 27th amendment to the Constitution.


• 1804 - The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for moving further upriver.


• 1846 - U.S. forces led by Zachary Taylor captured the Mexican city of Monterrey.


• 1868 - The Imperial Russian steam frigate Alexander Neuski shipwrecks off Jutland while carrying Grand Duke Alexei of Russia.


• 1906 - In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the Remote control.


• 1911 - Ground is broken for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.


• 1912 - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York, New York.


• 1915 - The Second Battle of Champagne begins.


• 1929 - Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full Instrument Flying from take off to landing is possible.


• 1944 - Surviving elements of the British 1st Airborne Division withdraw from Arnhem in the Netherlands, thus ending Operation Market Garden.


• 1955 - The Royal Jordanian Air Force is founded.


• 1957 - Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated through the use of United States Army troops.


• 1959 - Solomon Bandaranaike, prime minister of Sri Lanka is mortally wounded by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama, and dies the next day.


• 1962 - The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.


• 1970 - Cease-fire between Jordan and the fedayeen ends fighting triggered by four hijackings on September 6 and 9.


• 1972 - In the Norwegian EC referendum, 1972, the people of Norway reject membership.


• 1978 - PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727-214, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 and crashes in San Diego, California, resulting in the deaths of 144 people.


• 1980 - The first congress of the Democratic Youth Organization of Afghanistan held in Kabul.


• 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor was the 102nd Justice sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the first woman to hold the office.


• 1983 - Maze Prison escape. 38 republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijacked a prison meals lorry and smashed their way out of HMP Maze. The largest prison escape since WWII and in British history.


• 1996 - The last of the Magdalen Asylums closes in Ireland.


• 1997 - Wing Commander Andy Green, OBE (RAF) establishes the world Land Speed Record at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah in the ThrustSSC jet-powered car, and becomes the first man to break the speed of sound on land.


• 2002 - The Vitim event, a possible bolide impact in Siberia, Russia.


• 2003 - A magnitude-8.0 earthquake strikes just offshore of Hokkaidō, Japan.


• 2005 - E1 Train Disaster