August 25

Events

• 1609 - Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1718 - New Orleans, Louisiana is founded.
• 1768 – James Cook begins his first voyage.
• 1814 – Washington, D.C. is burned and White House is destroyed by British forces during the War of 1812.
• 1825 - Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil.
• 1912 - The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
• 1920 – Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, which began on August 13, ends. The Red Army is defeated.
• 1941 - Operation Countenance: Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran
• 1967 - George Lincoln Rockwell, American Nazi Party leader is assassinated.
• 1991 - Belarus declares independence from the Soviet Union

Births

• 1819 - Allan Pinkerton, American private detective (d. 1884)
• 1893 - Truman Smith, WWII American intelligence officer (d. 1970)
• 1919 - George Wallace, American politician (d. 1998)
• 1930 - Sean Connery, Scottish actor
• 1944 - Conrad Black, former newspaper magnate

Deaths

• 1688 - Henry Morgan, Welsh privateer
• 1776 - David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian (b. 1711)
• 1900 - Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (b. 1844)
• 1945 - John Birch, American intelligence officer and missionary (b. 1918)
• 1967 - George Lincoln Rockwell, American Nazi Party leader (b. 1918)
• 1968 - Harry Elmer Barnes, American historian (b. 1889)
• 2009 - Edward Kennedy, American politician (b. 1932)
• 2012 - Neil Armstrong, American astronaut and first man on the Moon. (b. 1930)