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April 25: Today in History – Historical Events
Early Centuries – April 25 Historic Events – Before the 1700s
1. 25th April 1590: The Sultan of Morocco launched a successful attack to capture Timbuktu. He sent 4000 soldiers under Judar Pasha to conquer Songhai. Pasha was left with only 1000 men after a five-month journey across the Sahara. But these soldiers who were armed with guns easily overpowered 25,000 men of the Songhai. Timbuktu and most of the Songhai fell.
2. 25th April 1644: When Beijing fell to the bandit and rebel leader Li Dzucheng, the Ming Chongzhen emperor committed suicide by hanging himself.
3. 25th April 1684: A patent was today granted for the thimble.
18th Century – What Happened on April 24 – The 1700s
4. 25th April 1707: The Anglo-Portuguese forces were defeated by the Franco-Spanish forces at the Battle of Almansa.
5. 25th April 1719: “Robinson Crusoe” a novel by Daniel Defoe, based on the story of Alexander Selkirk was published today.
6. 25th April 1792: Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be executed by guillotine.
19th Century – April 24 This Day That Year – The 1800s
7. 25th April 1854: A. Graham discovered asteroid #9 today.
8. 25th April 1854: US today ratified the Gadsden Purchase.
9. 25th April 1859: In Egypt, groundbreaking was done for the Suez Canal.
10. 25th April 1860: The first Japanese ambassador to the US Niimi Buzennokami arrived in Washington with his 74 staff members to present their credentials to President James Buchanan.
11. 25th April 1862: Admiral David Farragut gained control of the Mississippi River at New Orleans in Louisiana.
12. 25th April 1864: Union General Nathaniel Bank returned to Alexandria Louisiana, after facing defeat in the Red River Campaign.
13. 25th April 1867: Tokyo was opened for foreign trade.
14. 25th April 1882: French commander Henri Riviere seized the citadel of Hanoi. The French were enraged by the beheading of Capt. Henri Reviere when he attempted to seize the coal deposits at Ha Long Bay, started to colonize Vietnam.
15. 25th April 1896: A fight in Central Dance Hall started a fire in Cripple Creek in Colorado.
16. 25th April 1896: A tornado swept through several counties in Kansas killing at least nine people in Clay County. About 27 were destroyed.
17. 25th April 1898: The United States today formally declared war on Spain. The US House passed the declaration with a huge majority of 311 to 6.
20th Century – Important Events On This Day April 24th – The 1900s
18. 25th April 1901: New York today became the first state to require automobiles to have license plates. The fee was one dollar. The first license plates were issued in Paris in the year 1893.
19. 25th April 1906: J.H. Metcalf discovered asteroid #599: Luisa.
20. 25th April 1915: Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in the hope of attacking Central Powers from below. The Allies suffered defeat in one of the deadliest battles of the war.
21. 25th April 1925: General Paul von Hindenburg today took office as President of Germany.
22. 25th April 1926: In Iran, Reza Kahn was crowned Shah and chose the name “Pehlevi”.
23. 25th April 1937: The 26-year-old air show performer “Clem Sohn” died when his parachute failed to open.
24. 25th April 1938: A Seeing Eye dog was first used today.
25. 25th April 1945: In San Francisco, delegates from 50 countries met to organize the United Nations. The 500-member group headed by Charles Easton Rothwell helped establish the UN Charter.
26. 25th April 1945: The U.S. and Soviet forces linked up at Torgau on the Elba River, in central Europe during World War II. The meeting dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
27. 25th April 1945: Last B-17 attack on Nazi Germany.
28. 25th April 1945: 1,232 tons of bombs were dropped on Hitler’s alpine redoubt at Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden by some 318 British bombers.
29. 25th April 1945: Clandestine Radio 1212, used to hoax Nazi Germany, made its final transmission today.
30. 25th April 1946: About 48 people were killed in a train rammed into the “Exposition Flyer” at Napierville in Illinois.
31. 25th April 1949: E.L. Johnson today discovered asteroid #1922: Zulu.
32. 25th April 1950: Chuck Cooper became the first black to play in the NBA.
33. 25th April 1951: The Gloucestershire Regiment was annihilated on “Gloucestershire Hill” in Korea after three days of fight in the Battle of Imjim River against Chinese Communist Forces.
34. 25th April 1952: The use of automatic pinsetter was approved by the American Bowling Congress today.
35. 25th April 1952: President Juan Peron of Argentina won the re-election today.
36. 25th April 1953: An article describing the “double helix” of the DNA by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson was published today by the magazine “Nature”.
37. 25th April 1954: Bell Labs in New York City today announced the first solar battery.
38. 25th April 1955: The first cases of polio in children who received a vaccine were reported. It was later found that two batches of vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley contained live polio virus.
39. 25th April 1956: Former editor of the China Weekly Review, John W. Powell, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on charges of sedition. He had published articles about military use of germ warfare during the Korean War.
40. 25th April 1957: The first experimental sodium nuclear reactor went into operation today.
41. 25th April 1959: St. Lawrence Seaway lining Atlantic, Great Lakes opened to shipping.
42. 25th April 1960: A Triton submarine completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the earth today.
43. 25th April 1961: San Francisco Giants baseball games began to appear on TV.
44. 25th April 1961: The integrated circuit was today patented by Robert Noyce.
45. 25th April 1961: Mercury-Atlas rocket lifted off with an electronic mannequin. The unmanned Mercury test exploded on the launch pad.
46. 25th April 1961: France exposed its soldiers to nuclear tests intentionally to study how the atomic bomb would affect their bodies and minds. It was code-named “Gerbois verte”
47. 25th April 1962: Operation Dominic began with a test blast on Christmas Island. The operation was a series of 105 nuclear test explosions conducted by the US in 1962-63.
48. 25th April 1962: U.S. Ranger spacecraft crash-landed on the Moon.
49. 25th April 1967: Britain today granted internal self-government to Swaziland. The new Swaziland flag included a black and white shield to depict racial harmony.
50. 25th April 1971: U.S. Canal rights in Nicaragua and rights to Nicaragua’s Corn Islands expired today.
51. 25th April 1972: The German glider pilot Hans-Werner Grosse, glided 907.7 miles in an AS-W-12.
52. 25th April 1974: Marshal Antonio de Spinola was called to the barricades in Portugal to receive the surrender of the 41-year-old regime of Antonio Salazar. Spinola was named head of state by the 7-member military junta.
53. 25th April 1975: Former Foreign Minister Vu Van Mau was named prime minister of Vietnam today.
54. 25th April 1978: Attorney General of Arkansas and candidate for governor, William Clinton, sexually assaulted Juanita Broaddrick at the Camelot Inn in Little Rock, which was made public only in 1999.
55. 25th April 1978: The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that pension plans can’t require women to pay more.
56. 25th April 1979: N Chernykh of Russia discovered asteroids #2656: Evenkia and #3653.
57. 25th April 1980: President Jimmy Carter announced the hostage rescue disaster in Iran.
58. 25th April 1982: Israel completed the Sinai withdrawal by the Camp David agreement. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon directed the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula.
59. 25th April 1983: “Nightline” was expanded from half hour to one hour. The new format did not succeed and therefore the old program was restored.
60. 25th April 1983: After receiving a letter in which the Manchester, Maine, schoolgirl Samantha Smith expressed fears about nuclear war, Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov invited Samantha Smith to visit his country.
61. 25th April 1983: The Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed Pluto’s orbit, speeding on its endless voyage through the Milky Way.
62. 25th April 1986: In Swaziland King Mswati III was today crowned. He succeeded his father Sobhuza II as ruler of the southern African kingdom.
63. 25th April 1987: In Washington, thousands of people gathered to protest against U.S. foreign policy, especially toward Central America and South Africa.
64. 25th April 1988: “Nightline” went on location to Jerusalem in Israel.
65. 25th April 1988: NASA today launched space vehicle S-211.
66. 25th April 1988: Spectators cheered a judge in Jerusalem who sentenced John Demjanjuk to death. He was a retired autoworker in Ohio who was convicted of being “Ivan the Terrible”, a Nazi death camp guard who had killed tens of thousands of people. His conviction was however overturned later.
67. 25th April 1990: The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle “Discovery”.
68. 25th April 1990: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was today inaugurated as president of Nicaragua for a six-year term.
69. 25th April 1991: The U.S. White House threatened to “take whatever steps are necessary” should Iraq fail to meet a deadline for withdrawing its security forces from the refugee zone in northern Iraq.
70. 25th April 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev who faced harsh criticism during a closed-door meeting of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, offered to step down. This was however rejected.
71. 25th April 1992: Following the collapse of the Communist government, in Afghanistan, Islamic forces took control of most of the capital of Kabul.
72. 25th April 1992: A massive earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale shook northern California today.
73. 25th April 1993: Hundreds of thousands of gay rights activists and their supporters marched in Washington DC today, demanding equal rights and freedom from discrimination.
74. 25th April 1994: Former foreign minister Tsutomu Hata, a conservative, became prime minister of Japan. He succeeded Morihiro Hosokawa with political infighting continuing.
75. 25th April 1997: At least 24 people were killed and scores of others were injured in a fire at the New Imperial Hotel in Cotabato City in the Philippines.
76. 25th April 1977: In Israel, soldiers found the bodies of 2 teenage girls stabbed to death in the Wadi Kelt ravine near Jerusalem.
77. 25th April 1998: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was questioned by Whitewater prosecutors on videotape about her work as a private lawyer for a failed savings and loan at the center of an investigation.
78. 25th April 1999: More than 70,000 mourners gathered in Littleton, Colo, to remember the victims of the Columbine High School Massacre.
21st Century – April 24 This Day In History – The 2000s
79. 25th April 2000: A federal appeals court today declared the Ohio state motto “with God, all things are possible” as unconstitutional.
80. 25th April 2000: In India, it was reported that 50 million people faced severe drought in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
81. 25th April 2000: In southwestern Somalia, nearly 400 people are reported to have died of cholera over the last 2 weeks in the famine-ridden villages.
82. 25th April 2001: In the Philippines, ousted President Joseph Estrada became the country’s first leader to be arrested for alleged corruption in office. Estrada was jailed on 8 charges.
83. 25th April 2002: President Bush met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who told him bluntly that the US must temper its support to Israel. Abdullah also gave Bush an 8-point proposal for peace in the Middle East.
84. 25th April 2002: In New York City dozens of people were injured in an explosion that occurred in a building on W. 19th Street. The explosion is suspected to have been caused by Industrial chemicals.
85. 25th April 2002: An earthquake struck Tbilisi in Georgia killing at least three people.
86. 25th April 2003: Lawmakers of Georgia today voted to scrap the Dixie cross from the state’s flag.
87. 25th April 2003: In the northern state of Kashmir a powerful explosion ripped through the courthouse, killing three people and injuring 34.
88. 25th April 2003: UN agencies today reported that malaria kills 3,000 children a day in Africa and robs the continent of millions of dollars in lost productivity even though the disease could be controlled with nets costing as little as $5 and other simple means.
89. 25th April 2004: Clashes between Congolese troops and Rwandan insurgents in eastern Congo killed at least 61 people over the weekend.
90. 25th April 2005: President Bush sought relief from record-high gas prices and support for Middle East peace as he opened his Texas ranch to Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
91. 25th April 2005: It was reported that a species of sea squirt “Didemnum”, was spreading unabated off New England and the Pacific Northwest. This squirt is detrimental to shellfish beds and habitat for bottom-feeding fish.
92. 25th April 2005: The European Union trade ministers backed a full investigation into the allegations that cheap textiles and clothing from China were flooding the market, but disagreed on blocking imports.
93. 25th April 2005: In one of the worst train accidents in Japan in 40 years, a packed commuter train that was behind schedule and possibly speeding jumped tracks and hurtled into an apartment complex. 107 people died and 450 were injured in the accident.
94. 25th April 2006; Britain’s home secretary Charles Clarke, said that since 1999 Britain had freed 1,023 foreign prisoners, including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, who should have been considered for deportation at the time of their release.
95. 25th April 2006: Russia launched a satellite for Israel that the Israelis say will be used to spy on Iran’s nuclear program.
96. 25th April 2006: A pregnant suicide bomber blew herself up in front of a car carrying Sri Lanka’s highest-ranking general, killing 8 people and badly injuring the general.
97. 25th April 2007: A top US diplomat warned Belarus that new sanctions would be imposed if the authorities refused to release what he termed as political prisoners, and dropped charges against them.
98. 25th April 2008: In the Paktika province in Afghanistan, some 40 Taliban attacked Afghan police at Charbaran. The police called in American help and American helicopters broke the attack. Several insurgents were later tracked by drones and killed.
99. 25th April 2010: Colombian police claimed that they had captured Danit Doria Castillo, a leading figure in a drug trafficking, right-wing militia group.
100. 25th April 2014: California’s Governor Jerry Brown today said that the state drought is so severe that the government will roll back some environmental protections and loosen the rules on transferring water to farmers.
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