October 25
Events
Pre-1600
- 285 or 286 - Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers.
- 473 - Emperor Leo I acclaims his grandson Leo II as Caesar of the East Roman Empire.
- 1147 - Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
- 1147 - Reconquista: After a siege of four months, crusader knights conquer Lisbon.
- 1415 - Hundred Years' War: Henry V of England, with his lightly armoured infantry and archers, defeats the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt.
1601–1900
- 1616 - Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.
- 1747 - War of the Austrian Succession: A British fleet under Admiral Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre.
- 1760 - King George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather George II.
- 1809 - Golden Jubilee of George III is celebrated in Britain as he begins the fiftieth year of his reign.
- 1812 - War of 1812: The American frigate,, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate.
- 1822 - Greek War of Independence: The First Siege of Missolonghi begins.
- 1854 - The Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War. It is soon memorialized in verse as The Charge of the Light Brigade.
- 1861 - The Toronto Stock Exchange is created.
- 1868 - The Uspenski Cathedral, designed by Aleksey Gornostayev, is inaugurated in Helsinki, Finland.
- 1875 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23 premieres in Boston, Massachusetts, with Benjamin Johnson Lang as conductor and Hans von Bülow as soloist.
1901–present
- 1911 - The Xinhai Revolution spreads to Guangzhou, where the Qing general Fengshan is assassinated by the Chinese Assassination Corps.
- 1917 - Old Style date of the October Revolution in Russia.
- 1920 - After 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies.
- 1924 - The Zinoviev letter, which Zinoviev himself denied writing, is published in the Daily Mail; the Labour party would later blame this letter for the Conservatives' landslide election win four days later.
- 1927 - The Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314.
- 1932 - George Lansbury became the leader of the opposition British Labour Party.
- 1940 - Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.
- 1944 - World War II: Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
- 1944 - World War II: The under Richard O'Kane is sunk by the ship's own malfunctioning torpedo.
- 1944 - World War II: The final attempt of the Imperial Japanese Navy to win the war climaxes at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
- 1945 - Fifty years of Japanese administration of Taiwan formally ends when the Republic of China assumes control.
- 1949 - The Battle of Guningtou in the Taiwan Strait begins.
- 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
- 1968 - A Fairchild F-27 crashes into Moose Mountain while on approach to Lebanon Municipal Airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire, killing 32 people.
- 1968 - Soyuz 2 is launched.
- 1971 - The People's Republic of China replaces the Republic of China at the United Nations.
- 1973 - Egypt and Israel accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 339.
- 1980 - Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude.
- 1983 - The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
- 1989 - The first leg of the 1989 Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira is held at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal.
- 1990 - The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic declares its sovereignty from the Soviet Union.
- 1995 - A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
- 1997 - After a civil war, Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaims himself President of the Republic of the Congo.
- 1999 - A Learjet 35 crashes in Mina near Aberdeen, South Dakota, killing all six people on board, including PGA golfer Payne Stewart and golf course designer Bruce Borland.
- 2001 - Microsoft releases Windows XP, which becomes one of Microsoft's most successful operating systems.
- 2009 - The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kill 155 and wound at least 721.
- 2010 - Mount Merapi in Indonesia begins a month-long series of violent eruptions that kill 353 people and cause the evacuation of another 350,000 people.
- 2010 - A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes off Indonesia's Mentawai Islands, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 400 people.
- 2023 - A mass shooting occurs in two locations in Lewiston, Maine. 18 people are killed and 13 more injured.
Births
Pre-1600
- 840 - Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, founder of the Saffarid dynasty
- 1102 - William Clito, French son of Sybilla of Conversano
- 1330 - Louis II, Count of Flanders,
- 1453 - Giuliano de' Medici
- 1510 - Renée of France
- 1574 - François de Sourdis, French Catholic prelate
- 1589 - Jan Stanisław Sapieha, Polish-Lithuanian noble
1601–1900
- 1612 - James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, Scottish soldier
- 1667 - Louis Frederick I, Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
- 1683 - Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, English-Irish politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
- 1692 - Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain
- 1709 - Georg Gebel, German organist and composer
- 1714 - James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, Scottish judge
- 1736 - Thomas Mullins, 1st Baron Ventry, Anglo-Irish politician and peer
- 1743 - Friedrich Karl August, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont
- 1749 - Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, Swedish chamberlain
- 1754 - Richard Howell, 3rd Governor of New Jersey
- 1755 - François Joseph Lefebvre, French military commander
- 1757 - Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein, Prussian statesman
- 1759 - Maria Feodorovna, Russian wife of Paul I of Russia
- 1759 - William Grenville, English academic and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 1760 - Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren, German historian
- 1767 - Benjamin Constant, Swiss-French philosopher and politician
- 1768 - Frederick William, ruler of Nassau-Weilburg
- 1772 - Victoire de Donnissan de La Rochejaquelein, French memoirist
- 1772 - Géraud Duroc, French general and diplomat
- 1779 - Pedro Velarde y Santillán, Spanish artillery captain
- 1781 - Friedrich von Berchtold, Bohemian physician and botanist
- 1782 - Levi Lincoln Jr., American lawyer and politician, 13th Governor of Massachusetts
- 1789 - Carlos María de Alvear, Argentine soldier and statesman
- 1789 - Heinrich Schwabe, German astronomer
- 1790 - Robert Stirling, Scottish clergyman and inventor
- 1792 - Jeanne Jugan, French nun
- 1795 - John P. Kennedy, American novelist and Whig politician
- 1800 - Maria Jane Jewsbury, English writer, poet, literary reviewer
- 1800 - Thomas Babington Macaulay, English poet, historian, and politician, Secretary at War
- 1800 - Jacques Paul Migne, French priest
- 1800 - Julius von Mohl, German orientalist
- 1802 - Richard Parkes Bonington, English painter
- 1802 - Joseph Montferrand, Canadian logger and strongman
- 1803 - Maria Doolaeghe, Flemish novelist
- 1806 - Max Stirner, German philosopher and author
- 1811 - Évariste Galois, French mathematician and theorist
- 1814 - Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours
- 1815 - Camillo Sivori, Italian virtuoso violinist and composer
- 1819 - Christian August Friedrich Garcke, German botanist
- 1821 - Antonio Ciseri, Swiss-Italian painter
- 1825 - Johann Strauss II, Austrian composer and educator
- 1825 - Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt, German astronomer and geophysicist
- 1827 - Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist and politician
- 1832 - Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia
- 1838 - Georges Bizet, French pianist and composer
- 1838 - James Maybrick, English cotton merchant, victim of the "Aigburth Poisoning"
- 1844 - Philip Wicksteed, English economist
- 1848 - Carlo Emery, Italian entomologist
- 1848 - Karl Emil Franzos, Austrian novelist
- 1852 - Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, Russian author
- 1853 - Karl August Otto Hoffmann, German botanist
- 1856 - Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, Croatian geologist, paleontologist, and archaeologist
- 1858 - Take Ionescu, Romanian politician, diplomat, journalist and lawyer
- 1864 - John Francis Dodge, American businessman, co-founded the Dodge Company
- 1864 - Alexander Gretchaninov, Russian-American pianist and composer
- 1864 - Toktogul Satylganov, Kyrgyz Akyn, poet and singer
- 1866 - Thomas Armat, American mechanic and inventor
- 1866 - Norbert Klein, Bishop of Brno
- 1866 - Georg Schumann, German composer
- 1867 - Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, Polish general
- 1868 - Dan Burke, American baseball player
- 1868 - Oskar Kallas, Estonian linguist and diplomat
- 1870 - Elsa Reger, German writer
- 1874 - Emma Gramatica, Italian actress
- 1874 - Victor Sonnemans, Belgian water polo player
- 1874 - Huang Xing, Chinese revolutionary leader and statesman
- 1875 - Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, American author and educator
- 1875 - Arthur Birkett, British cricketer
- 1877 - Adolf Moller, German rower
- 1877 - Henry Norris Russell, American astronomer
- 1879 - Fritz Haarmann, German serial killer
- 1880 - Bohumír Šmeral, Czech politician
- 1881 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor
- 1882 - John T. Flynn, American journalist and author
- 1882 - Tony Jackson, American singer-songwriter and pianist
- 1882 - André-Damien-Ferdinand Jullien, French Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
- 1882 - Theodora Agnes Peck, American author and poet
- 1883 - Nikolay Krestinsky, Russian revolutionary and politician
- 1884 - Maria Czaplicka, Polish cultural anthropologist
- 1885 - Sam M. Lewis, American singer and lyricist
- 1885 - Xavier Lesage, French equestrian
- 1886 - Leo G. Carroll, English-American actor
- 1886 - Karl Polanyi, Austro-Hungarian economist and historian
- 1887 - Alexander McCulloch, British rower
- 1888 - Richard E. Byrd, American admiral and pilot
- 1888 - Nils Dardel, Swedish-American painter
- 1888 - Jan Palouš, Czechoslovak ice hockey player
- 1888 - Léon Tom, Belgian fencer and bobsledder
- 1889 - Abel Gance, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1890 - Floyd Bennett, American aviator
- 1890 - Kōtarō Tanaka, Japanese jurist and politician
- 1891 - Charles Coughlin, Canadian-American priest and radio host
- 1891 - Karl Elmendorff, German conductor
- 1892 - Nell Shipman, Canadian-American actress, screenwriter, and producer
- 1894 - Claude Cahun, French photographer and sculptor
- 1894 - Âşık Veysel Şatıroğlu, Turkish poet and songwriter
- 1894 - Johan Wilhelm Rangell, Prime Minister of Finland
- 1895 - Levi Eshkol, Ukrainian-Israeli soldier and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of Israel
- 1895 - Vsevolod Merkulov, Russian head of the NKGB
- 1895 - Arthur Schmidt, German officer
- 1896 - Nils Backlund, Swedish water polo player
- 1897 - Erwin von Lahousen, German Abwehr official
- 1897 - Karl Olivecrona, Swedish lawyer and philosopher
- 1897 - Luigi Pavese, Italian actor
- 1898 - Karl Anton, German director, screenwriter and producer
- 1899 - Armand Thirard, French cinematographer
- 1900 - Johan Greter, Dutch equestrian
- 1900 - Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Nigerian educator and activist
- 1900 - William Stevenson, American track and fielder