Events, Births and Deaths Happening on this Date
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Today is the 206th day of 2026. There are 159 days left in this year.
Notable Events
1668
A magnitude 8.5 earthquake strikes eastern China, killing over 42,000 people.
1797
Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain).
1837
The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated in London by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone.
1861
The United States Congress passes the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery, in the wake of the defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.
1866
Ulysses S. Grant was named General of the Army, the first officer to hold the rank.
1868
Congress passed an act creating the Wyoming Territory.
1897
American author Jack London embarks on a sailing trip to take part in the Klondike's gold rush, from which he wrote his first successful stories
1898
American troops invaded Spanish-controlled Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish-American War. Upon winning the war, the U.S. would acquire Puerto Rico from Spain and would later give American citizenship to all Puerto Ricans.
1909
French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel in a monoplane, traveling from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.
1925
Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.
1934
The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.
1940
General Henri Guisan orders the Swiss Army to resist German invasion and makes surrender illegal.
1943
Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by the King (encouraged by the Grand Council of Fascism) and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.
1946
The United States detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.
1952
Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
1956
The Italian liner Andrea Doria sank after colliding with the Swedish ship Stockholm off the New England coast, killing 51 people.
1961
In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.
1965
Musician Bob Dylan debuted his electric guitar in a concert at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.
1969
U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This is the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.
1978
Louise Joy Brown, the world's first "test tube baby," was born in England. She was the first human to have been born after conception through in-vitro fertilization and is still alive today.
1983
Thirty-seven Tamil political prisoners at the Welikada high security prison in Colombo are massacred by the fellow Sinhalese prisoners.
1984
Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.
1990
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to discuss Iraq's economic dispute with Kuwait.
1993
Israel launches a massive attack against Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call the Seven-Day War.
1994
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein signed a declaration at the White House ending their countries' 46-year-old formal state of war.
1995
A U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes.
1995
A gas bottle explodes in Saint Michel station of line B of the RER (Paris regional train network). Eight are killed and 80 wounded.
1996
In a military coup in Burundi, Pierre Buyoya deposes Sylvestre Ntibantunganya
1997
K.R. Narayanan became India's president, the first member of an ''untouchable'' Dalits caste to do so.
2000
Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashes outside of Paris shortly after taking off at Charles de Gaulle Airport, killing 113 people.
2007
Pratibha Patil is sworn in as India's first female president.
2010
Online whistleblower Wikileaks leaked over 90,000 U.S. military records and intelligence reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the Internet, in what was one of the biggest leaks of classified documents in history.
Notable Births
1923
Estelle Getty, was an American actress and comedian best known for her portrayal of Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls (1985-92), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.
1941
Emmett Till was an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store.
1942
Bruce William Woodley is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. He was a founding member of the successful folk-pop group the Seekers.
1943
Jim McCarty is an English musician, best known as the drummer for the Yardbirds and Renaissance. Following Chris Dreja's departure from the Yardbirds in 2013, McCarty became the only founding member to still tour in the band.
1946
Rita Marley is a Cuban-born Jamaican singer, songwriter and entrepreneur. She is the widow of reggae legend Bob Marley.
1948
Steve Goodman was an American folk and country singer-songwriter from Chicago. He wrote the song "City of New Orleans", which was recorded by Arlo Guthrie and many others.
1953
Walter Payton was an American professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears.
1958
Thurston Moore is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a member of the rock band Sonic Youth.
1964
Anne Applebaum is an American and naturalized-Polish journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
1967
Matt LeBlanc is an American actor. He garnered global recognition with his portrayal of Joey Tribbiani in the NBC sitcom Friends and in its spin-off series, Joey.
1971
Roger Creager is an American Texas country music singer and songwriter from Corpus Christi, Texas.
1974
Lauren J. Faust is an American animator, writer, director, and producer, best known as the creator of the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and DC Super Hero Girls.
1978
Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born in Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through in-vitro fertilization.
1982
Brad Renfro was an American actor. He made his film debut at age 11 with a starring role in The Client (1994). Renfro went on to appear in 21 feature films and won several awards.
Notable Deaths
1843
Charles Macintosh FRS was a Scottish chemist and the inventor of the modern waterproof raincoat. The Mackintosh raincoat is named after him.
1984
Willie Mae Thornton, better known as Big Mama Thornton because of her height, and weight, was an American singer and songwriter of the blues and R&B. She was the first to record Leiber and Stollers "Hound Dog", in 1952.
1986
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director. He directed the classic movie musicals Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958).
1989
Steve Rubell was an American entrepreneur and co-owner of the New York City disco Studio 54.
1995
Charlie Rich was an American country singer. His eclectic style of music also blended influences from rockabilly, jazz, blues, soul, and gospel.
1997
Ben Hogan was an American professional golfer who is generally considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game.
2003
John Richard Schlesinger was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy, and was nominated for the same award for two other films.
2017
Michael Johnson was an American pop, country, and folk singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best remembered for his 1978 hit song "Bluer Than Blue".
2020
Peter Green, was an English blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. As the founder of Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green founded Fleetwood Mac in 1967.
2022
Paul Sorvino was an American actor. He often portrayed authority figures on both the criminal and the law enforcement sides of the law.