What is believed to be the first recorded railroad accident in U.S. history occurs when four people are thrown off a vacant car on the Granite Railway near Quincy, Massachusetts. The victims had been invited to view the process of transporting large and weighty loads of stone when a cable on a vacant car snapped […]

On July 25, 1878, Black Bart robs a Wells Fargo stagecoach in California. Wearing a flour sack over his head, the armed robber stole the small safe box with less than $400 and a passenger’s diamond ring and watch. When the empty box was recovered, a taunting poem signed “Black Bart” was found inside: Here […]

During the Spanish-American War, U.S. forces launch their invasion of Puerto Rico, the approximately 110-mile-long, 35-mile-wide island that was one of Spain’s two principal possessions in the Caribbean. With little resistance and only seven deaths, U.S. troops under General Nelson A. Miles were able to secure the island by mid-August. After the signing of an armistice […]

In Paris, France, on July 25, 1917, the exotic dancer and suspected secret agent Mata Hari is sentenced to death by a French court for purportedly spying on Germany’s behalf during World War I. Since 1903, Margueretha Gertruida Zelle, born in a small town in northern Holland and formerly married to a captain in the […]

On July 25, 1943, Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, is voted out of power by his own Grand Council and arrested upon leaving a meeting with King Vittorio Emanuele, who tells Il Duce that the war is lost. Mussolini responded to it all with an uncharacteristic meekness. During the evening of July 24 and […]

On July 25, 1961, in a televised address to the American people about the Berlin Crisis, President John F. Kennedy speaks soberly about the need for nuclear fallouts shelters. He announces that he has instructed Congress to identify spaces that could be used as bomb shelters, and to stock them with “minimal essentials for survival” […]

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, performing a rock-and-roll set publicly for the very first time while a chorus of shouts and boos rained down on him from a dismayed audience. A year earlier, before he took the stage at Newport—the annual event that had given him his […]

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to parents Lesley and Peter Brown. The healthy baby was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section and weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces. Before […]

On July 25, 1985, Rock Hudson, a quintessential tall, dark and handsome Hollywood leading man of the 1950s and 1960s who made more than 60 films during his career, announces through a press release that he is suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). With that announcement, Hudson became the first major celebrity to go […]

An Air France Concorde jet crashes upon takeoff in Paris on July 25, 2000, killing 109 passengers and crew onboard as well as four people on the ground. The Concorde, the world’s fastest commercial jet, had enjoyed an exemplary safety record up to that point, with no crashes in the plane’s 31-year history. Air France […]