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Events on October 25 32

Year 473

Emperor Leo I acclaims his grandson Leo II as Caesar of the Byzantine Empire.

Year 1147

Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.

Year 1147

Reconquista: After a siege of four months, crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques reconquered Lisbon.

Year 1415

Hundred Years' War: Henry V of England and his lightly armoured infantry and archers defeat the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt on Saint Crispin's Day.

Year 1616

Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.

Year 1747

British fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre.

Year 1760

George III becomes King of Great Britain.

Year 1812

War of 1812: The American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.

Year 1822

Greek War of Independence: The First Siege of Missolonghi begins.

Year 1828

St Katharine Docks open in London.

Year 1854

The Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

Year 1861

The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.

Year 1900

The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.

Year 1917

Old Style date of the October Revolution in Russia

Year 1920

After 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies.

Year 1924

The Zinoviev letter, which Zinoviev himself denied writing, is published in the Daily Mail; the Labour party would later blame this letter for the Conservatives' landslide election win.

Year 1927

The Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314.

Year 1940

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.

Year 1944

Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.

Year 1944

The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.

Year 1944

World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf: The largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets. Afterward is the first Kamikaze attack of the war.

Year 1945

The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan's surrender to the Allies.

Year 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council proving that Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.

Year 1971

The United Nations seats the People's Republic of China and expels the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations).

Year 1973

Yom Kippur War officially ends with a ceasefire.

Year 1977

Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.

Year 1980

Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague.

Year 1983

Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.

Year 1995

A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.

Year 1997

After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.

Year 2009

The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.

Year ?

Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers.

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