Monday, July 25
2005-07-25 14:55
Today is Monday, July 25, the 206th day of 2005. There are 159 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1593 - France's King Henry IV becomes a Roman Catholic for the second and final time in an effort to gain Paris and be recognized as the legitimate king.
1689 - France's King Louis XIV declares war on Britain after England, the Dutch and the Austrian Hapsburgs unite in the Grand Alliance to resist Louis's expansionism.
1792 - Austria's Duke of Brunswick issues manifesto threatening destruction of Paris if France's royal family is harmed. This assures the fall of the monarchy when agitators decide this is proof of Louis XVI's traitorous dealings.
1798 - Napoleon Bonaparte enters Cairo with his French troops.
1830 - France's King Charles X issues ordinances controlling the press, dissolving legislative chambers and changing electoral system.
1878 - China's first diplomatic mission to United States arrives in Washington.
1894 - The Japanese navy defeats a Chinese fleet in Kanghwa Bay, sparking Sino-Japanese War over influence in Korea.
1920 - French forces occupy Damascus, Syria; Greeks under King Alexander occupy Adrianople.
1934 - Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated in unsuccessful Nazi coup attempt in Austria.
1943 - Benito Mussolini is forced to resign as prime minister of Italy during World War 2.
1952 - Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
1956 - Italian liner Andrea Doria and Swedish ship Stockholm collide off coast of North America. Fifty lives are lost.
1957 - Tunisia becomes independent from France with Habib Bourgiba as president.
1963 - United States, Soviet Union and Britain conclude treaty prohibiting nuclear testing in atmosphere, space or under water.
1968 - Pope Paul VI bans all artificial birth control methods for Roman Catholics.
1969 - The Guam Doctrine - also known as US President Richard M Nixon's Doctrine - is first publicly proclaimed: At its core is the notion that there is a five -sided power balance in the world - the United States, Russia, Japan, Western Europe and China - and that US allies should do more to defend themselves.
1971 - Dr Christiaan Barnard transplants two lungs and a heart into a man in Cape Town, South Africa, and the operation is described as successful.
1973 - Federal judge rules that US government must halt bombing of Cambodia on grounds it is "unauthorized and unlawful."
1978 - The world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born; a 5-pound, 12-ounce (2.58-kilogram) healthy girl delivered by Caesarean section in Lancashire, England.
1988 - A group of 700 Aborigines riot in Geraldton, Western Australia, following the funeral of an Aboriginal man who died in police custody.
1990 - Liberian rebels attack an airfield in Monrovia, closing off that city's last link to outside world.
1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev tells Communist Party leaders that building communism in the Soviet Union is no longer a realistic goal and that party must reject "outdated ideological dogmas."
1992 - Italian government sends 7 000 soldiers to Sicily in a Mafia crackdown.
1993 - Black gunmen attack church near Cape Town, killing 10 white worshippers.
1996 - A hijacker holds an Algerian jetliner for five hours at an airport in western Algeria before he is overpowered. All 232 people aboard are unharmed.
1997 - The Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia hold an apparently fake trial of their former leader Pol Pot, who is sentenced to house arrest.
1998 - Government officials say US President Bill Clinton has been subpoenaed to testify in the Monica Lewinsky case.
2000 - An Air France Concorde traveling to New York crashes into a hotel outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing 113 people.
2001 - China expels Gao Zhan, a US-based Chinese sociologist convicted of spying for Taiwan.
2002 - Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen accused of conspiring with 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks, withdraws his guilty plea in a U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.
2003 - Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner revokes a decree that prohibits the extradition of Argentine officials accused of torture or murder during the 1976-83 military dictatorship's "dirty war" against leftist opponents.
2004 - Israelis form a human chain stretching 55 miles (90 kilometers) from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza Strip withdrawal plan, as violence leaves six Palestinian militants dead and five Israeli children wounded in the bloodiest clash in the West Bank in a month.
Today's Birthdays:
Arthur J Balfour, English statesman (1848-1930); Maxfield Parrish, US illustrator/painter (1870-1966), Davidson Black (1884-1934), Canadian physician/anthropologist, Elias Canetti, Bulgarian writer and Nobel laureate (1905-1994); Estelle Getty, US actress (1923--); Iman, Somali model/actress (1955--); Matt LeBlanc, US actor (1967--).
Thought For Today:
I am at two with nature - Woody Allen, US actor, comedian, film director and producer. (1935-)
- SAPA