Events on August 25 44
Year 357
Battle of Strasbourg: Julian, Caesar (deputy emperor) and supreme commander of the Roman army in Gaul, wins an important victory against the Alemanni at Strasbourg (Argentoratum).
Year 766
Emperor Constantine V humiliates nineteen high-ranking officials, after discovering a plot against him. He executes the leaders, Constantine Podopagouros and his brother Strategios.
Year 1248
The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, the Archbishop of Utrecht.
Year 1258
Regent George Mouzalon and his brothers are killed during a coup headed by the aristocratic faction under, paving the way for its leader, Michael VIII Palaiologos, to ultimately usurp the throne of the Empire of Nicaea.
Year 1537
The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.
Year 1630
Portuguese forces are defeated by the Kingdom of Kandy at the Battle of Randeniwela in Sri Lanka.
Year 1758
Seven Years' War: Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Russian army at the Battle of Zorndorf.
Year 1814
War of 1812: On the second day of the Burning of Washington, British troops torch the Library of Congress, United States Treasury, Department of War, and other public buildings.
Year 1823
American fur trapper Hugh Glass is mauled by a grizzly bear while on an expedition in South Dakota.
Year 1835
The first Great Moon Hoax article is published in The New York Sun, announcing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon.
Year 1875
Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.
Year 1883
France and Viet Nam sign the Treaty of Huế, recognizing a French protectorate over Annam and Tonkin.
Year 1894
Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
Year 1898
Seven hundred Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British Consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mob in Heraklion, Greece.
Year 1914
World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.
Year 1920
Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, which began on August 13, ends with the Red Army's defeat.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 1945
Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party kill U.S. intelligence officer John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
Year 1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
Year 1950
President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
Year 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.
Year 1967
George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is assassinated by a former member of his group.
Year 1989
Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time.
Year 1991
The Battle of Vukovar begins. An 87-day siege of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serb paramilitary forces, between August and November 1991 (during the Croatian War of Independence).
Year 1997
Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, is convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.
Year 2001
American singer Aaliyah and several members of her record company are killed as their overloaded aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Marsh Harbour Airport, Bahamas.
Year 2006
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko is sentenced to nine years imprisonment for money laundering, wire fraud, and extortion.
Year 2012
Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.
Year 2017
Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2004. The storm causes catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern Texas, killing 90 people and causing $198.6 billion in damage.