Events on March 25 40
Year 919
Romanos Lekapenos seizes the Boukoleon Palace in Constantinople and becomes regent of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.
Year 1000
Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah assassinates the eunuch chief minister Barjawan and assumes control of the government.
Year 1199
Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
Year 1576
Jerome Savage takes out a sub-lease to start the Newington Butts Theatre outside London.
Year 1802
The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the United Kingdom.
Year 1807
The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
Year 1807
The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger-carrying railway in the world.
Year 1811
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
Year 1821
Traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821 (Julian calendar).
Year 1865
American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
Year 1894
Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington, D.C.
Year 1911
In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
Year 1917
The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
Year 1924
On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
Year 1941
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
Year 1948
The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
Year 1949
More than 92,000 kulaks are suddenly deported from the Baltic states to Siberia.
Year 1957
United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on obscenity grounds.
Year 1957
The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members.
Year 1965
Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
Year 1969
During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
Year 1971
Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistan Armed Forces against East Pakistani civilians.
Year 1971
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
Year 1979
The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
Year 1988
The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
Year 1995
WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
Year 1996
The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
Year 2006
Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Year 2006
Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.