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Explore 25 August

Explore 25 August: Paris is liberated after four years of German occupation, Uruguay’s patriots declare independence from Brazil at Florida, Galileo shows his telescope to the rulers of Venice, British and Soviet troops invade Iran and Voyager 2 sweeps past Neptune. Born today: Johann Gottfried Herder, Hans Krebs and Tim Burton.

This day through time →13 verified events across 5 eras

⌛13Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙8Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉1Firsts &
Discoveries ☆1Sporting
Moments ♫1Culture
Stories
Armoured vehicles of Leclerc's division fighting in front of the Opéra in Paris on 25 August 1944
Armoured vehicles of Leclerc’s division fighting in front of the Opéra in Paris on 25 August 1944
Image creditNational Museum of the U.S. Navy · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1944

Paris is liberated after four years of German occupation

German troops had marched into Paris in June 1940, and for four years the city lived under curfews, rationing, arrests and deportations. After the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944 the German front in France collapsed, and on 19 August the Paris Resistance rose against the garrison. The Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower had planned to bypass the city, but with fighting in the streets he agreed that the Free French 2nd Armoured Division of General Philippe Leclerc should go in first, followed by the US 4th Infantry Division.

Leclerc’s tanks reached the centre on the morning of 25 August 1944. The German commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, had not carried out Hitler’s order to leave the city in ruins, and that afternoon he signed the surrender of the garrison. In the evening Charles de Gaulle spoke at the Hôtel de Ville of a Paris broken and martyred, but liberated by its own people with the help of France, and the next day he led a victory march down the Champs-Élysées before huge crowds.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The National WWII Museum: The Liberation of Paris ↗
The Oath of the Thirty-Three Orientals, Juan Manuel Blanes's painting of the exiles who began the rising in April 1825
The Oath of the Thirty-Three Orientals, Juan Manuel Blanes’s painting of the exiles who began the rising in April 1825
Image creditJuan Manuel Blanes · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1825

Uruguay’s patriots declare independence from Brazil

The land on the east bank of the Uruguay River, known as the Banda Oriental, had been fought over by Spain and Portugal for more than a century. After Spanish rule ended, Portuguese and then Brazilian troops occupied it, and in 1821 it was annexed as the Cisplatine Province. In April 1825 a small band of exiles led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja, remembered as the Thirty-Three Orientals, crossed the river from Buenos Aires and raised the countryside against Brazilian rule.

On 25 August 1825 an assembly of representatives meeting in the town of Florida declared all acts joining the province to Brazil null and void, voted to unite it with the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, and adopted a flag of its own. The declaration led to war between Brazil and the United Provinces; in 1828, with British mediation, both sides agreed to recognise an independent Uruguay instead. 25 August is still celebrated as the country’s Independence Day.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Uruguay, Ministry of Education and Culture: 25 de Agosto de 1825, Declaratoria de la Independencia ↗
Galileo shows the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope, in a 19th-century fresco by Giuseppe Bertini
Galileo shows the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope, in a 19th-century fresco by Giuseppe Bertini
Image creditGiuseppe Bertini · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1609

Galileo shows his telescope to the rulers of Venice

In 1609 Galileo Galilei was a mathematics professor at the University of Padua, in the territory of the Republic of Venice, and short of money. That summer he heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had made a tube that made distant things look near. Working out the principle for himself, he ground his own lenses and built an instrument that magnified about eight or nine times, far better than the toys being sold in European markets.

His friend Paolo Sarpi arranged for him to show it to the Venetian authorities. Senators climbed the bell tower of St Mark’s to see ships far out at sea hours before they could be seen with the naked eye, and the presentation of the telescope to the Senate is usually dated 25 August 1609, although accounts of the exact days differ. The grateful Senate doubled Galileo’s salary and gave him his post for life. Within months he had turned a better telescope on the sky and seen mountains on the Moon and the moons of Jupiter.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Scientific American: 400 years ago, Galileo’s telescope was ready for prime time ↗
Soviet tank crews of the 6th Armoured Division drive a T-26 tank through the streets of Tabriz in 1941
Soviet tank crews of the 6th Armoured Division drive a T-26 tank through the streets of Tabriz in 1941
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1941

British and Soviet troops invade Iran

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Britain and the Soviets became allies, and neutral Iran suddenly mattered to both. Its oil fields and the great refinery at Abadan supplied Britain’s forces, and its new Trans-Iranian Railway offered a way to send war supplies from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet Union. The two powers demanded that Reza Shah expel most of the Germans living in the country, and were not satisfied with his answers.

On 25 August 1941 Soviet forces crossed into Iran from the north while British and Indian troops advanced from Iraq and the Gulf to seize the oil fields. Iran’s army could not hold out, and within days the government asked for a ceasefire. Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Mohammad Reza on 16 September, and the occupied country became the ‘Persian Corridor’, through which millions of tons of Allied supplies reached the Soviet Union.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Iranica: Anglo-Iranian relations, Pahlavi period ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Johann Gottfried Herder
Image creditAnton Graff · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1744

Johann Gottfried Herder

German philosopher and critic whose ideas on language, folk song and national culture helped shape the Romantic movement.

Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias
Image creditGoupil · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1803

Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias

Brazilian soldier and statesman who put down regional revolts, commanded Brazil’s forces in the Paraguayan War and is honoured as patron of the Brazilian army.

Allan Pinkerton
Image creditBrady's National photographic Galleries · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1819

Allan Pinkerton

Scottish-born detective who founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago and ran intelligence for the Union early in the American Civil War.

Hans Krebs
Image creditUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1900

Hans Krebs

German-born British biochemist who discovered the citric acid cycle, now called the Krebs cycle, and shared the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Image creditFars News Agency · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1934

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Iranian cleric and politician who was speaker of parliament in the 1980s and president of Iran from 1989 to 1997.

Tim Burton
Image creditHarald Krichel · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1958

Tim Burton

American film-maker known for the gothic fantasy of Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow.

Taslima Nasrin
Image creditTNasreen · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1962

Taslima Nasrin

Bangladeshi doctor and writer whose novel Lajja brought threats from Islamist groups and forced her into exile in 1994.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

Neptune in an enhanced-colour picture made from Voyager 2's last whole-planet images, showing the Great Dark Spot
Neptune in an enhanced-colour picture made from Voyager 2’s last whole-planet images, showing the Great Dark Spot
Image creditNASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1989

Voyager 2 sweeps past Neptune

Twelve years after its launch, and after visits to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, NASA’s Voyager 2 reached the last stop on its grand tour of the giant planets. Neptune, almost 4.5 billion kilometres from the Sun, had been seen only as a blurred blue disc through telescopes, and radio signals from the spacecraft now took about four hours to reach Earth.

On 25 August 1989 Voyager 2 passed about 4,950 kilometres above Neptune’s north pole, the closest it came to any planet on its journey, and a few hours later it flew by the large moon Triton. It found a huge storm, the Great Dark Spot, winds faster than on any other planet, a set of thin rings and six new moons, and saw dark plumes rising from Triton’s frozen surface. No spacecraft has been back to Neptune since.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA: 30 years ago, Voyager 2’s historic Neptune flyby ↗
☆
SPORTING HISTORY

Sporting Moments

Abebe Bikila runs barefoot ahead of Rhadi Ben Abdesselam near the end of the marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics
Abebe Bikila runs barefoot ahead of Rhadi Ben Abdesselam near the end of the marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics
Image creditUnknown photographer (ANSA) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1960

The Rome Olympics open among the city’s ancient ruins

Rome had been chosen to host the Olympic Games in 1908 but had to give them up after the eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. Half a century later it finally staged them, and on 25 August 1960 President Giovanni Gronchi opened the Games of the XVII Olympiad at the Stadio Olimpico. The organisers set events among the monuments of the ancient city: wrestling in the Basilica of Maxentius, gymnastics at the Baths of Caracalla and a marathon that finished at night by the Arch of Constantine.

They were the first Olympic Games to be fully covered by television, and they produced some of the most famous moments in Olympic history. The Ethiopian Abebe Bikila won the marathon running barefoot, the first Olympic champion from sub-Saharan Africa; Wilma Rudolph of the United States won three sprint golds; and an 18-year-old boxer from Louisville, Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, won the light-heavyweight title.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Rome 1960 Olympic Games ↗
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MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

Lunar animals and other objects supposedly discovered by Sir John Herschel, a print made on the back of the Sun's moon stories
Lunar animals and other objects supposedly discovered by Sir John Herschel, a print made on the back of the Sun’s moon stories
Image creditBenjamin Henry Day · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1835

The New York Sun announces life on the Moon

The New York Sun was one of the new ‘penny papers’, sold cheaply on the streets to a mass readership. On 25 August 1835 it began a series of articles said to be reprinted from an Edinburgh scientific journal, reporting that the famous British astronomer Sir John Herschel, then observing from the Cape of Good Hope, had used an enormous new telescope to see the surface of the Moon in astonishing detail.

Over six instalments readers learned of lunar forests and seas, herds of small bison, blue goats with a single horn, beavers that walked on two legs and, at last, winged people resembling bats. None of it was true: Herschel knew nothing of the articles, which were most likely written by the Sun journalist Richard Adams Locke. Sales soared, the story was reprinted across America and Europe, and the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ is still remembered as one of the most successful newspaper fakes.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The Lost Museum Archive, City University of New York: ‘Great Astronomical Discoveries’, New-York Sun, 1835 ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Margaret of Anjou
Image creditThe Talbot Master · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1482

Margaret of Anjou

French-born queen of England, wife of Henry VI, who led the Lancastrian cause in the Wars of the Roses.

Grigory Zinoviev
Image creditMoisei Nappelbaum · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1936

Grigory Zinoviev

Bolshevik leader and first head of the Communist International who was shot after the first of Stalin’s Moscow show trials.

Stanley Bruce
Image creditNational Library of Australia · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1967

Stanley Bruce

Prime Minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929, later high commissioner in London and the first Australian to sit in the House of Lords.

John McCain
Image creditUnited States Congress · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 2018

John McCain

American naval pilot who was held prisoner in North Vietnam for more than five years and later served as a senator for Arizona and Republican candidate for president in 2008.

HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 25 August chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 13 verified events and the sources behind them.

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