May 8

July 25

315 The Battle of the Milvian Bridge was fought between the Roman Emperors Constantine I and Maxentius over control of the entire Roman Western Empire in October 312. Constantine won and he entered Rome in triumph the next day to be met with popular jubilation. The Arch of Constantine was completed on July 25, 315 to commemorate Constantine the Great's victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.

Arch of Constantine

1152 King Louis VI of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine were married on July 25, 1137 in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux by the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Eleanor complained about the pious Louis’s lack of interest in lovemaking saying that he was “more of a monk than a man." Eleanor did produce Louis two daughters, but the marriage was later annulled, as there were no male children.

1368 Guy de Chauliac died on July 25, 1368. A French surgeon who was physician to the Pope, he completed in 1363 his seminal work, Chirurgia magna (Great Surgery) which covered anatomy, anesthetics, bloodletting, drugs, fractures, ulcers and wounds. For many years de Chauliac was considered to be the most eminent surgeon around and his good character was revealed when during the plague epidemics at Avignon he continued to tend the sick while many other physicians fled.

1554 Mary I of England married Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral on July 25, 1554. She wished to produce a Catholic heir, thus preventing the Protestant Elizabeth succeeding her to the throne. Queen Mary used a marmalade made of almonds, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, musk, orange peel, quinces, rosewater and sugar in an unsuccessful attempt to help herself get pregnant.

Mary and her husband, Philip

1593 Although baptized as a Roman Catholic, Henry IV of France was raised as a Protestant by his mother, who had declared Calvinism the religion of Navarre. At a ceremony in the Basilica of St Denis on July 25, 1593, Henry officially renounced his Protestant faith and was received into the Catholic religion. It was a political conversion aimed at bringing an end to the religious wars that had ravaged France for so long. Henry declared "Paris is worth a Mass" as he rode into his capital city.

1603 After the death of Queen Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland was proclaimed James I of England. He succeeded to the English throne through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, who was Henry VIII's oldest sister. His English coronation took place on July 25, 1603, with elaborate allegories  by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson. Below is "England and Scotland with Minerva and Love," an allegorical work of the Union of the Crowns by Peter Paul Rubens.


1797 Horatio Nelson lost his right arm on July 25, 1797. He was hit by a musket ball after stepping ashore on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. His right arm was amputated without anesthetics on board the Theseus. After his arm had been removed, Nelson was left alone to recover with an opium pill and a shot of rum. He was back in command in 30 minutes after surgeons amputated his arm.

1814 Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, married Georgiana Whitmore at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon on July 25, 1814. They made a home in Marylebone in London, and had eight children, but only four survived childhood. Georgiana died in Worcester on September 1, 1827, the same year as his father, their second son (also named Charles) and their newborn son Alexander.

1818 The seventh of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels, The Heart of Midlothian was originally published in four volumes on July 25, 1818, under the title of Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, and the author was given as "Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and Parish-clerk of Gandercleugh". (Scott was writing under a pseudonym at the time.) Much of the dialogue of The Heart of Midlothian is in Lowland Scots, and some editions carry a glossary.

Set of Scott's Waverley Novels By Pete unseth 

1832 The first recorded railroad accident in U.S. history occurred on the Granite Railway near Quincy, Massachusetts on July 25, 1832. A wagon containing Thomas B. Achuas, of Cuba, derailed as he and three other tourists were taking a tour. The occupants of the carriage were thrown over a cliff, approximately 35 ft (11 m). Mr. Achuas was killed and the three other passengers were badly injured.

1834 For many years the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge took half a gallon of laudanum a week for his rheumatism and toothache and he became totally addicted to it. In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, took residence in the Highgate home of an admirer Dr James Gillman, a young surgeon. Coleridge died in Highgate, London on July 25, 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium.

1837 The first commercial use of an electric telegraph was successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on July 25, 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London. The telegraph was used to transmit stock market prices between the two stations.

Cooke and Wheatstone's five-needle, six-wire telegraph (1837). By Geni

1839 The British politician William Gladstone married on July 25, 1839 the charming, serene and beautiful, Catherine Glynne. A woman of lively wit, complete discretion, and exceptional charm, but also impulsive and forgetful, Catherine was totally devoted to her husband. Gladstone was a kind and gentle family man and it was a happy marriage, he called her "the ivy" and she called him "the oak".
They had four sons and four daughters. One child died in infancy.

1842 German judge Daniel Paul Schreber was born on July 25, 1842. A paranoid schizophrenic, Schreber believed he was receiving cosmic rays through his anal glands by God in order to transform him into a woman so that he could herald and breed a new race. He described his mental illness in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, an account which served as Sigmund's Freud's primary source to understand the condition.

1843 Charles Macintosh, the inventor of the waterproof raincoat, died on July 25, 1843. In 1823 the Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh came up with a method of producing waterproof cloth by binding together two layers of fabric with India rubber dissolved in naphtha. He used the waterproof cloth to make the first ever raincoats, which proved a welcome protection against the wet.


1844 President John Tyler's first wife Letitia Tyler died in 1842 while he was in office. On July 25, 1844 John Tyler took Julia Gardiner as his second wife, thus becoming the first US President to marry while in office. President Tyler was 54 years old, while Julia was just 24 when they got married. The children from his first wife did not approve of his new bride and did not attend.
Between 1846 and 1860, Julia and John had seven children together.

1865 Fifty years before women were allowed to enroll into medical school, Margaret Ann Bulkley dressed as a man to study medicine and become her alter-ego, Dr James Barry. She obtained a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, then served first in Cape Town, South Africa and subsequently in many parts of the British Empire. It was only when she died from dysentery on July 25, 1865 that her secret was exposed after 46 years working as an army doctor.

Photograph of Dr James Barry; approx late 1840s

1866 The US Congress passed legislation on July 25, 1866 authorizing the rank of General of the Army. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant was the first to be promoted to this rank. His pay was "$400 per month, and his allowance for fuel and quarters" except "when his headquarters are in Washington, shall be at the rate of three hundred dollars per month." When appointed General of the Army, Grant wore the rank insignia of four stars and coat buttons arranged in three groups of four.

1893 The Corinth Canal, connecting the Gulf of Corinth with the Aegean Sea's Saronic Gulf, is the longest ever lasting construction project. Dividing the Peloponnese peninsula and mainland Greece, it was first proposed as far back as the 7th century BC, and was officially started by Nero in 67 AD, but due to complications it was not finished until the 1890s. The canal was formally opened on July 25, 1893.

The Inauguration of the Corinth Canal (1893) by Konstantinos Volanakis

1907 The Russian inventor Boris Rosing's interest in television — or the "electric telescope", as he called it — started in 1897. He began experimenting with the Nipkow disc using the cathode ray tube as a receiver, eventually succeeding in transmitting some crude television pictures. Rosing filed a patent application in Russia on July 25, 1907.

1908 Glynn Wolfe was born on July 25, 1908. The Blythe, California, resident holds the Guinness World Record for the largest number of monogamous marriages. His 29th and final marriage was to Linda Wolfe (née Essex), who holds the record for having been most married woman in the world. She died single in 2010 with 23 ex-husbands.

1909 Louis Blériot made the first flight across the English Channel in a plane on July 25, 1909. Blériot's flight across the English Channel demonstrated conclusively the international potential of aeroplanes. The French aviator flew from Calais, France to Dover, England in 37 minutes in a small.24 horse-powered monoplane, winning a £1,000 prize from the London Daily Mail which had been offered to the first person to fly across the Channel.


1911 Bobby Leach was the first man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, accomplishing the feat on July 25, 1911. He spent six months in hospital recovering from his injuries. Leach traveled the world recounting his ordeal in vaudeville shows. Years later he slipped on a piece of orange peel, injured his leg, and died from complications.

1920 English chemist Rosalind Franklin was born on July 25, 1920. She is considered to be the unsung hero of DNA research; James Watson and Francis Crick got the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix after Franklin's lab partner showed Watson one of her best images — an X-ray labelled ‘photograph 51'. Many believe she should have shared in their Nobel Prize.


1952 Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States on July 25, 1952. This means it is an organised, self-governing territory with locally elected governors and legislatures. Puerto Rico elects a Resident Commissioner to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1957 Tunisia got its independence from France in 1956 and Habib Bourguiba became the first president. French along with Arabic is still spoken today. Republic Day is celebrated in Tunisia on July 25th, marking the day when the Republic of Tunisia was declared on July 25, 1957.


1959 Trained as a development engineer, Sir Christopher Cockrell began work on the hovercraft in 1953. A contract was placedwith Saunders-Roe for the development of what would become the SR.N1, short for "Saunders-Roe, Nautical 1". The SR.N1 made its first crossing of the English Channel on July 25, 1959 with the inventor on deck. The date was the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot's cross-channel flight. The crossing took two hours.

1965 On July 25, 1965 Bob Dylan went electric, plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival. Up until that point, Bob Dylan had been predominantly known as a folk singer-songwriter, admired for his acoustic performances and socially conscious lyrics. He was booed off the stage for playing an electric guitar, but the event signaled a major change in folk and rock music.


1978 The world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born on July 25, 1978 at Oldham General Hospital, in Oldham, England. She weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces (2.608 kg) at birth. Her parents, Lesley and John Brown, had been trying to conceive for nine years.

1983 The world’s first test-tube baboon was born in San Antonio, Texas on July 25, 1983. As the first non-human primate conceived in a laboratory dish, she was named ET (standing for Embryo Transfer). E.T. was born six months after her conception in a laboratory dish. She was the result of in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure that involves collecting eggs from a female and fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory. The resulting embryos are then implanted in a surrogate mother.

1992 The 1992 Summer Olympics were held in Barcelona, Spain, from July 25 to August 9, 1992. It was the first and to date only Olympics to be held in Spain. The games were a major success for Barcelona, and they helped to revitalize the city. The games also helped to promote Spain as a tourist destination.

2000 While taking off on July 25, 2000, en route from Paris to New York City, Air France Concorde Flight 4590 ran over debris on the runway, blowing a tyre and puncturing a fuel tank, leading to fire and engine failure. The aircraft crashed killing all 100 passengers and nine crew members, as well as four people on the ground. It was the only fatal Concorde accident during its 27-year operational history.


2009 Harry Patch, the last UK surviving World War I veteran soldier to fight in the trenches, died on July 25, 2009, aged 111 years, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day. Patch was a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment and fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was wounded in the leg and was invalided home. He later worked as a tailor and married in 1920.

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