Saint Crispin’s Day has a long military memory — Agincourt in 1415, Balaclava in 1854 — but 25 October also carries a coronation, a concerto and a change at the United Nations. This timeline follows the date from 1415 to 2001.
Kingdoms, conflict, faith, power and the changing medieval world.
Henry V’s heavily outnumbered English army, built around some 5,000 archers, destroyed a French force several times its size on muddy ground near Agincourt on 25 October 1415, the feast of Saint Crispin.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Agincourt ↗Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.
George II died suddenly on 25 October 1760, and because his eldest son Frederick had died in 1751 the crown passed to his grandson, who became George III at the age of twenty-two. His reign lasted until 1820 and took in the loss of the American colonies, the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the union with Ireland.
Source: The Royal Family: George III (r. 1760-1820) ↗Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.
The Charge of the Light Brigade, in a lithograph after the war artist William Simpson.Image: William Simpson (painter, 1823-1899) E. Walker (lithographer, unknown) Published by Goupil & Cie, Paris, and Day & Son, London. · Public domainAt Balaclava on 25 October 1854 a misunderstood order sent the British Light Brigade charging the wrong Russian guns; more than 260 of the 673 men were killed or wounded. The same morning the 93rd Highlanders formed the ‘thin red line’.
Source: National Army Museum: Battle of Balaklava ↗Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor had its first performance at the Music Hall in Boston on 25 October 1875, with Hans von Bülow as soloist and Benjamin Johnson Lang conducting. The composer had hoped his friend Nikolai Rubinstein would introduce it; Rubinstein told him it was worthless and unplayable. Von Bülow took it up instead, and the American premiere was a success. It is now among the most played of all piano concertos.
Source: Boston Symphony Orchestra: Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Opus 23 ↗War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.
Benito Mussolini, who proclaimed the Axis in a speech at Milan a week after the agreement was signed.Image: Unknown · Public domainOn 25 October 1936 Italy and Germany signed the agreement drafted by Mussolini’s foreign minister and son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, committing the two to a common foreign policy. Ciano had visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden the day before, and Germany became the first power to recognise Italy’s annexation of Ethiopia. Mussolini announced the arrangement in Milan on 1 November, calling it an ‘axis’ around which other European states might turn — the word that named the wartime alliance. It was hardened into a formal treaty, the Pact of Steel, in 1939.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Rome-Berlin Axis ↗
The General Assembly hall at the United Nations headquarters in New York.Image: Patrick Gruban, cropped and downsampled by Pine · CC BY-SA 2.0The United Nations General Assembly voted on 25 October 1971, by 76 to 35 with 17 abstentions, to recognise the People’s Republic of China as the only lawful representative of China at the UN and on the Security Council.
Source: United Nations Digital Library: Resolution 2758 (XXVI), restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations ↗
A United States Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter on Grenada in 1983.Image: SPEC. Long · Public domainAmerican and Caribbean forces landed on Grenada on 25 October 1983, six days after the killing of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, in the largest United States military operation since Vietnam. The island was secured by 27 October.
Source: US Army Center of Military History: Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada ↗The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.
An electroencephalograph running Windows XP, its taskbar visible at the foot of the screen; no freely licensed picture of the 2001 launch exists.Image: Юрий Петрович Маслобоев / Yury Petrovich Masloboev · CC BY-SA 3.0Microsoft launched Windows XP worldwide on 25 October 2001 with an event in Times Square in New York, where Bill Gates gave the keynote address. XP was the first consumer version of Windows built on the more robust Windows NT foundations rather than the old MS-DOS line. It proved extraordinarily long-lived: more than 400 million copies were in use by early 2006, and machines were still running it years after support ended.
Source: Microsoft: Windows XP is here! ↗Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.
This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 25 October, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.
Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.
Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.
The Battle of Agincourt in a fifteenth-century miniature.Image: 
George III in coronation robes, painted by Allan Ramsay.Image: 
Hans von Bülow, who gave the first performance.Image: