Scottish poet Robert Burns is born on January 25, 1759. The day is still celebrated by Burns fans across the English-speaking world, with high-spirited “Robert Burns Night” feasts, featuring haggis and other Scottish delicacies, as well as enthusiastic drinking, toasting and speechmaking. Burns, the son of a poor farmer, received little formal schooling but read […]

At the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, the 1.33 pound, 3,106-carat diamond "Cullinan" is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine’s superintendent. It was the largest diamond ever found.

On January 25, 1919, in Paris, delegates to the peace conference formally approve the establishment of a commission on the League of Nations. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on chairing the commission—for him, the establishment of the League lay squarely at the center of the peace negotiations. He was supported by British Prime Minister David […]

On January 25, 1942, Thailand, a Japanese puppet state, declares war on the Allies. When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, Thailand declared its neutrality, much to the distress of France and the U.K. Both European nations had colonies surrounding Thailand and hoped Thailand would support the Allied effort and prevent Japanese encroachment […]

On January 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy becomes the first U.S. president to hold a live televised news conference. From a podium in the State Department auditorium, Kennedy read a prepared statement regarding the famine in the Congo, the release of two American aviators from Russian custody and impending negotiations for an atomic test […]

The Israeli submarine Dakar, carrying 69 sailors, disappears on January 25, 1968. It would remain missing for some 30 years. The Dakar was built at the height of World War II by H.M. Dockyard in Great Britain and commissioned as the HMS Totem by the British navy in 1943. Following the war, the submarine was […]

In Los Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson is convicted, along with followers Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, of the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others. In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco, where he […]

Jiang Qing, the widow of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death for her “counter-revolutionary crimes” during the Cultural Revolution. Originally an actress in Communist theater and film, her marriage to Mao in 1939 was widely criticized, as his third wife, Ho Zizhen, was a celebrated veteran of the Long March who Mao had […]

On January 25, 2005, a Wichita, Kansas, television station receives a postcard from the BTK killer that leads police to discover a Post Toasties cereal box that had been altered to contain the letters BTK. This communication was one in a long line sent by the serial killer who terrorized Wichita for over 30 years, […]