After aborting a poorly planned and ill-timed attack on the British-controlled city of Montreal, Continental Army Colonel Ethan Allen is captured by the British on September 25, 1775. After being identified as an officer of the Continental Amy, Allen was taken prisoner and sent to England to be executed. Although Allen ultimately escaped execution because […]

On September 25, 1867, the pioneering cattleman Oliver Loving dies from gangrene poisoning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A few weeks before, Loving had been trapped by 500 Comanche braves along the Pecos River. Shot in the arm and side, Loving managed to escape and reach Fort Sumner. Though the wounds alone were not fatal, […]

On September 25, 1894, President Grover Cleveland issues a presidential proclamation pardoning followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) who had previously engaged in polygamous marriages or habitation arrangements considered unlawful by the U.S. government. At the time, and to this day, plural marriages between one man and multiple […]

On September 25, 1928, Chicago’s new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation is officially incorporated. In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: “motor” evoked cars and motion, while “ola” derived from “Victrola” and was supposed to make people think of music.) In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin […]

Mob assassins shoot Anthony Carfano, known as Little Augie Pisano, to death in New York City on Meyer Lansky’s orders. Lansky, one of the few organized crime figures who managed to survive at the top for several decades, was estimated to have accumulated as much as $300,000,000 in ill-gotten gains by the 1970s. Still, the […]

On September 25, 1970, in the 8:30 p.m. time slot immediately following “The Brady Bunch,” ABC premiered a program that would give television production company Screen Gems its second TV-to-pop-chart smash: “The Partridge Family.” Unwilling to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit, “The Monkees,” went off the air in 1968, Screen Gems […]

A Pacific Southwest Airlines jet collides in mid-air with a small Cessna over San Diego, killing 144 people on September 25, 1978. The wreckage of the planes falls into a populous neighborhood, doing extensive damage on the ground. David Lee Boswell and his instructor, Martin Kazy, were in the process of a flying lesson in […]