Events of the day 25 March
Events of day 25 March
708:
Pope Constantine succeeds Pope Sisinnius as the 88th pope.
717:
Theodosius III resigns the throne to the Byzantine Empire to enter the clergy.
919:
Romanos Lekapenos seizes the Boukoleon Palace in Constantinople and becomes regent of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.
1000:
Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah assassinates the eunuch chief minister Barjawan and assumes control of the government.
1199:
Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
1306:
Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scots (Scotland).
1409:
The Council of Pisa opens.
1555:
The city of Valencia is founded in present-day Venezuela.
1576:
Jerome Savage takes out a sub-lease to start the Newington Butts Theatre outside London.
1584:
Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
1655:
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
1802:
The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the United Kingdom.
1807:
The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1807:
The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger-carrying railway in the world.
1811:
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1821:
Traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821 (Julian calendar).
1845:
New Zealand Legislative Council pass the first Militia Act constituting the New Zealand Army
1865:
American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
1894:
Coxey's Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington, D.C.
1911:
In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
1917:
The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
1918:
The Belarusian People's Republic is established.
1924:
On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
1931:
The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
1941:
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
1947:
An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
1948:
The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
1949:
More than 92,000 kulaks are suddenly deported from the Baltic states to Siberia.
1957:
United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on obscenity grounds.
1957:
The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members.
1965:
Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969:
During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
1971:
Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistan Armed Forces against East Pakistani civilians.
1971:
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
1975:
Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
1979:
The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
1988:
The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
1995:
WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
1996:
The European Union's Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
2006:
Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
2006:
Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.
Celebrations 25 March
1953:
