On June 25, 1864, four years into the Civil War, Pennsylvania troops for the Union, begin digging a tunnel toward the Rebels at Petersburg, Virginia, in order to blow a hole in the Confederate lines and break the stalemate. The great campaign between Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Ulysses S. […]

On June 25, 1915, the German press publishes an official statement from the country’s war command addressing the German use of poison gas at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres two months earlier. The German firing of more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres in […]

Following his arrival in London, Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower takes command of U.S. forces in Europe on June 25, 1942. Although Eisenhower had never seen combat during his 27 years as an army officer, his knowledge of military strategy and talent for organization were such that Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall […]

On June 25, 1950, armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War. The United States, acting under the auspices of the United Nations, quickly sprang to the defense of South Korea and fought a bloody and frustrating war for the next three years. Korea, a former Japanese possession, […]

The last Packard—the classic American luxury car with the famously enigmatic slogan “Ask the Man Who Owns One”—rolls off the production line at Packard’s plant in Detroit, Michigan on June 25, 1956. Mechanical engineer James Ward Packard and his brother, William Dowd Packard, built their first automobile, a buggy-type vehicle with a single cylinder engine, […]

On June 25, 1978, activists hoist a vibrant rainbow flag in the midst of the festivities for San Francisco’s Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day parade. According to its creator, Gilbert Baker, the crowd immediately recognized the flag’s significance: “It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightning—that […]

On June 25, 1988, 17-year-old Debbie Gibson becomes the youngest person ever to write, produce and perform her own #1 pop single when her single “Foolish Beat” reaches the top of the Biilboard Hot 100. Contrary to what some critics of teen pop might imagine, pop sensation Debbie Gibson saw herself not as the next […]

On June 25, 1996, a tanker truck loaded with 25,000 pounds of explosives rips through the U.S. Air Force military housing complex Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding nearly 500 others. The terrorist attack that blew off much of the eight-story Building 131, leaving a crater 50 feet wide […]