1925

Years: 1922 1923 1924 - 1925 - 1926 1927 1928

Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s

Events

January–March

• January 3 – Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy.
• January 5 – Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor in the United States.
• January 27 – February 1 – The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. territory of Alaska, to combat an epidemic.
• February 2 – The 1925 Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.
• February 21 – The New Yorker magazine publishes its first issue.
• February 25 – Art Gillham records for Columbia Records the first Western Electric masters to be commercially released.
• March 4 – Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio.
• March 6 – Pionerskaya Pravda, one of the oldest children's newspapers in Europe, is founded in the Soviet Union.
• March 10 – Olympiacos F.C., Greece's most successful football club is founded.
• March 15 – The Phi Lambda Chi fraternity (original name "The Aztecs") is founded on the campus of Arkansas State Teacher's College in Conway, Arkansas (now the University of Central Arkansas).
• March 18 – The Tri-State Tornado rampages through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027. It hits the towns of Murphysboro, Illinois; Gorham, Illinois; Ellington, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana.
• March 21 – Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signs the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the state's public schools.
• March 31 – Radio station WOWO in Ft. Wayne, Indiana begins broadcasting.

April–June

• April 1 – Frank Heath and his horse Gypsy Queen leave Washington, D.C. to begin a two-year journey to visit all 48 states.
• 4 April – The Schutzstaffel was formerly founded.
• April 10 – F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.
• April 16 – The Communist St. Nedelya Church assault claims the lives of 150 and injures 500 in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.
• May 5 – Scopes Trial: Dayton, Tennessee, biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
• May 5 – The General Election Law is passed in Japan.
• May 8 – Tom Lee rescues 32 people from the M.E. Norman, a sinking steamboat.
• May 25 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
• May 25 – The National Forensic League is founded.
• May 29 – The British explorer Percy Fawcett sends a last telegram to his wife, before he disappears in the Amazon.
• June 1 – Percy and Florence Arrowsmith are married. This couple, who celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary June 1, 2005 (Percy aged 105, and wife Florence 100), are acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records as record-holders for the longest marriage for a living couple and the greatest aggregate age of a married couple.
• June 6 – The Chrysler Corporation is founded by Walter Percy Chrysler.
• June 13 – Charles Francis Jenkins achieves the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound, using 48 lines, and a mechanical system. A 10-minute film of a miniature windmill in motion is sent across 5 miles from Anacostia to Washington, DC. The images are viewed by representatives of the National Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Navy, the Commerce Department, and others. Jenkins calls this "the first public demonstration of radiovision".
• June 14 – The Turkish football club Göztepe is founded.
• June 29 – Santa Barbara Earthquake of 1925: A 6.3 earthquake destroys downtown Santa Barbara, California.

July–September

• July 10 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
• July 10 – Meher Baba begins his 44 year silence.
• July 18 – Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.
• July 21 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
• July 25 – The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.
• August 14 – The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is completed and goes on line.
• August 25 – The French evacuate the Ruhr region of Germany.
• September 3 – The U.S. dirigible Shenandoah breaks up en route to Scottfield, St. Louis; 14 crewmen are killed.

October–December

• October 30 – John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter.
• November 6 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
• November 24 – The silent film Hussar of the Dead is released in Santiago de Chile.
• November 26 – Prajadhipok (Rama VII) is crowned as King of Siam.
• November 28 – The country-variety show Grand Ole Opry makes its radio debut on station WSM (it later becomes the longest-running live music show).
• December 1 – Locarno Treaties are signed.
• December 15
  • Reza Shah becomes shah of Persia.
• December 16
  • Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity, is founded at Lafayette College.
• December 16 – Colombo Radio launches in Ceylon; the station is subsequently known as Radio Ceylon.
• December 26 – The Great Sphinx of Giza is unearthed after restoration.

Births

• January 20 - Frantz Fanon, Black radical philosopher (d. 1961)
• January 28 - Robert E. Miles, White activist and KKK leader (d. 1992)
• February 26 - Robert F. Williams, radical Black activist (d. 1996)
• May 19 - Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator (d. 1998)
• May 19 - Malcolm X, American Black radical (d. 1965)
• September 4 - Asa Earl Carter, author and segregationist (d. 1979)
• October 13 - Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2013)

Deaths

• July 26 - William Jennings Bryan, American politician (b. 1860)