1261A Byzantine general slips into Constantinople and ends the Latin Empire
In 1204 the knights of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople and set up a Latin Empire there, while Byzantine princes fled to build rival states in exile. The strongest of them was the Empire of Nicaea in western Anatolia, and by 1261 its ruler, Michael VIII Palaiologos, had pushed the Latin emperor Baldwin II back to little more than the city itself. Constantinople’s great land walls still looked too strong to take by siege.
In July 1261 Michael’s general Alexios Strategopoulos was near the city with only a small force, many of them Cuman horsemen. Local farmers told him that most of the Latin garrison and the Venetian fleet had sailed off to attack a nearby island. On the night of 25 July his men got inside, overpowered the guards and opened a gate, and the city fell almost without a fight. Baldwin fled by ship. Michael entered in triumph in August and was crowned in Hagia Sophia, and the restored Byzantine Empire lasted until 1453.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Baldwin II Porphyrogenitus ↗
1567Diego de Losada founds Santiago de León de Caracas
The green valley below the Ávila mountain, a few miles inland from the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, was home to peoples the Spanish called the Caracas. Earlier Spanish attempts to settle there had been driven out. In early 1567 the conquistador Diego de Losada set out from El Tocuyo with a small, experienced force and fought his way into the valley against fierce resistance led by chiefs including Guaicaipuro.
There he founded a city, very probably on 25 July 1567; no founding document survives, but 25 July is the feast of St James, and it is the day Caracas has always celebrated. He named it Santiago de León de Caracas, after the apostle James, the provincial governor Pedro Ponce de León and the valley’s native people. The small colonial town grew into the capital of Venezuela, the birthplace of Simón Bolívar and today a city of millions.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Fundación Empresas Polar, Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela: Losada, Diego de ↗
1909Louis Blériot flies across the English Channel
Only six years after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight, the London Daily Mail offered £1,000 to the first aviator to fly across the English Channel. By July 1909 three men were waiting on the French coast for the right weather. One of them was Louis Blériot, a French maker of car headlamps who had poured his fortune into flying machines, crashing many of them along the way.
At dawn on 25 July 1909 he took off from Les Baraques, near Calais, in his Type XI, a small monoplane with a 25-horsepower Anzani engine. He carried no compass, lost sight of land in the haze and worried that rain would stop his engine. After about 36 minutes he spotted the cliffs of Dover and came down hard in a field near the castle, damaging his undercarriage and propeller. He was a hero overnight, and Britain realised that the sea no longer made it an island.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Blériot’s Cross-Channel Flight ↗
1943Mussolini is voted down and dismissed by the king
By the summer of 1943 Italy was losing the Second World War. Its armies had been driven out of North Africa, Allied troops landed in Sicily on 10 July, and Rome was bombed for the first time a few days later. Leading Fascists, army chiefs and the court all wanted to be rid of Benito Mussolini, who had ruled Italy for more than 20 years.
On the evening of 24 July the Fascist Grand Council met for the first time since the war began. After a long night of argument it voted by a large majority for Dino Grandi’s motion asking King Victor Emmanuel III to take back his full powers. On the afternoon of 25 July the king received Mussolini, dismissed him and had him arrested as he left, naming Marshal Pietro Badoglio prime minister. Crowds celebrated in the streets. Mussolini was held on remote islands and then in a mountain hotel, until German commandos freed him in September.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Grand Council of Fascism ↗
1957Tunisia abolishes its monarchy and becomes a republic
Tunisia had been ruled by beys of the Husaynid dynasty since 1705, and from 1881 they reigned under a French protectorate. Independence came in March 1956, won largely by the Neo-Destour party of the lawyer Habib Bourguiba, who became prime minister under the bey, Muhammad VIII al-Amin. The bey had little power, and Bourguiba had little patience for a monarchy many nationalists felt had done too little against French rule.
On 25 July 1957 the Constituent Assembly voted to abolish the monarchy, declared Tunisia a republic and made Bourguiba head of state; the bey was confined to his house. Bourguiba, who as prime minister had already brought in a family law that banned polygamy and widened women’s rights, ruled as president for 30 years until he was removed in 1987. Republic Day on 25 July is a public holiday in Tunisia.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Habib Bourguiba, presidency ↗
