March 25 is the 84th day of the year (85th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 281 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Anniversary of the Arengo and the Feast of the Militants (San Marino)
- Christian feast day:
- Earliest day on which Seward’s Day can fall, while March 31 is the latest; celebrated on the last Monday in March. (Alaska)
- In the Julian calendar, Birkat Hachama is recited every 28 years on this day
- Freedom Day (Belarus)
- Hilaria (Roman Empire)
- International Day of the Unborn Child
- Revolution Day in Greece, celebrating the symbolic outbreak of the War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821.
- Maryland Day (Maryland)
- Mother’s Day (Slovenia)
- Struggle for Human Rights Day (Slovakia)
- Tolkien Reading Day
- The Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary (Christianity), and its related observances (some churches move the observance if March 25 falls on a Sunday or during Holy Week):
- Historic start of the new year (Lady Day) in England, Wales, Ireland, and the future United States until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. (The year 1751 began on 25 March; the year 1752 began on 1 January.) It is one of the four Quarter days in Ireland and England.
- Vårfrudagen or Våffeldagen, “Waffle Day” (Sweden)
History
In 421, Venice is founded at twelve o’clock noon, according to legend.
In 708, Pope Constantine succeeds Pope Sisinnius as the 88th pope.
In 717, Theodosios III resigns the throne to the Byzantine Empire to enter the clergy.
In 1199, Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
In 1306, Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
In 1409, The Council of Pisa opens to try to solve the schism in the Catholic church between the two popes Gregory and Benedict, held its first meeting at Pisa..
In 1449, England broke a truce and captured Fougeres from the French, leading Charles VII to renew the Hundred Years War.
In 1555, The city of Valencia is founded in present-day Venezuela.
In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
In 1609, Henry Hudson sets out on the seven-month exploration for the Dutch East India Company that takes him to America.
In 1634, The first settlers arrive in Maryland by English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore.
In 1655, Saturn‘s largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.
In 1755, George Washington planted Pecan trees given to him by Thomas Jefferson.
In 1774, the Boston Port Bill, the first bill of the Intolerable Acts (called by the Colonists) is brought up by Parliament, closing Boston harbor until restitution for the destroyed tea is made (becomes law on March 31st…. effective June 1, 1774).
In 1776, Continental Congress authorized a medal for George Washington.
In 1802, The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a “Definitive Treaty of Peace” between France and the United Kingdom.
In 1807, The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
In 1807, The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger carrying railway in the world.
In 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
In 1813, the first U.S. flag was flown in battle on the Pacific, frigate Essex.
In 1821, (Julian Calendar) Traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821. The date was chosen in the early years of the Greek state so that it falls on the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strengthening the ties between the Greek Orthodox Church and the newly found state.
In 1857, Frederick Laggenheim took the first photograph of a solar eclipse.
In 1863, the first Army Medal of Honor was awarded.
In 1865, American Civil War: In Virginia, Confederate forces temporarily capture Fort Stedman from the Union.
In 1865, the last offensive for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia begins with an attack on the center of Grant’s forces at Petersburg. Four hours later the attack is broken.
In 1894, Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
In 1902, Irving W. Colburn patented the sheet glass drawing machine.
In 1911, In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
In 1914, Aris is founded in Thessaloniki.
.jpg)
In 1915, first submarine disaster; US F-4 sinks off Hawaii, 21 lives lost. Joining the First Submarine Group, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, F-4 participated in the development operations of that group along the west coast, and from August 1914, in Hawaiian waters. During submarine maneuvers off Honolulu, Hawaii on 25 March 1915, she sank at a depth of 306 ft (93 m), 1.5 mi (2.4 km) from the harbor. Despite valorous efforts of naval authorities at Honolulu to locate the missing boat and save her crew, all 21 perished. F-4 was the first commissioned submarine of the U.S. Navy to be lost at sea. A diving and engineering precedent was established with the Navy’s raising of the submarine on 29 August 1915. Courage and tenacity marked the efforts of divers who descended to attach cables to tow the boat into shallow water, while ingenuity and engineering skill characterized the direction of Naval Constructor J.A. Furer, Rear Admiral C.B.T. Moore, and Lieutenant C. Smith who accomplished the feat with the aid of specially devised and constructed pontoons. Navy diver George D Stillson found the superstructure caved in and the hull filled with water. Only four of the dead could be identified; the 17 others were buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1917, The Georgian Orthodox Church restores its autocephaly abolished by Imperial Russia in 1811.
In 1918, Claude Debussy, French composer (b. 1862) dies of rectal cancer at his Paris home. He was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. In France, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. Debussy’s music is noted for its sensory content and frequent eschewing of tonality. The French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
In 1918, The Belarusian People’s Republic is established.
In 1924, On the anniversary of Greek Independence, Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the Second Hellenic Republic.
In 1931, The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
In 1937, the first perfumed ad appeared in the Washington, D.C. “Daily News” on this day. The ad featured flowers, which was
appropriate, for it was cherry blossom time which happens about this time in the nation’s capitol each year.
In 1941, The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
In 1944, Flight Sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (1922–1987) was a rear gunner in Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster heavy bombers during World War II, who survived—without a parachute—a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) when abandoning his out-of-control, burning aircraft over Germany. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground. He was able to move his arms and legs and suffered only a sprained leg. The Lancaster crashed in flames, killing pilot Jack Newman and three other members of the crew. They are buried in the CWGC’s Hanover War Cemetery.
In 1947, An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois kills 111.
In 1948, The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
In 1949, The extensive deportation campaign known as March deportation is conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to force collectivisation by way of terror. The Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
In 1951, Edward Mills Purcell and H.I. Ewen at the Harvard physics lab detect 21-cm radiation in outer space
In 1957, United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg‘s poem “Howl” on the grounds of obscenity.
In 1957, The European Economic Community is established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).
In 1958, Canada‘s Avro Arrow makes its first flight.
In 1960, D H Lawrence’ “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was ruled not obscene (NYC).
In 1965, Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1969, During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
In 1971, Bangladesh Liberation War: Beginning of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistani Armed Forces against East Pakistani civilians.
In 1971, The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandon an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
In 1975, Faisal of Saudi Arabia is shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew.
In 1979, The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.
In 1985, British journalist Alec Collett, a British employee for UNRWA, was kidnapped along with his Austrian driver on March 25, 1985. The Austrian was only briefly held then released. In a videotape released in April 1986, Collett was shown being hanged by his kidnappers. Collett’s body was not found until November 2009.
In 1988, The Candle demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
In 1990, The Happy Land fire was an arson fire that kills 87 people trapped inside an illegal nightclub in the New York City borough of The Bronx.
In 1992, Pakistan national cricket team won the 1992 Cricket World Cup first time in the history of cricket, Final was played at Melbourne Cricket Ground .
In 1992, the B-52s and actress Kim Basinger headlined a New York fundraiser for Democratic presidential hopeful Jerry Brown.
In 1992, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station, thereby missing the upheaval in his homeland, finally returned to earth. He had originally been scheduled for a five-month mission, but to cut costs his superiors scrapped another flight and doubled his time. He was amazed upon returning that the Soviet Union no longer existed.
In 1993, Warrington Bomb victim Tim Parry dies five days after the IRA bomb detonated in Warrington, Cheshire on 20 March 1993 in the second of the Warrington bomb attacks.
In 1995, WikiWikiWeb, the world’s first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.
In 1996, An 81-day-long standoff between the anti-government group Montana Freemen and law enforcement near Jordan, Montana, begins.
In 1996, The European Union‘s Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
In 1997, Georgia Governor Zell Miller signed into a law a ban on a controversial form of late-term abortion.
In 1998, Netscape forms a new division to focus on its Web-site business in a heightened search for ways to make money. Revenues from their browser software has plummeted after being forced to give it away its browser to compete with the evil empire Microsoft’s macro-virus risky Internet Explorer.
In 1998, the first known physician-assisted suicide to be legal under Oregon state law was reported by the group Compassion In Dying.
In 1999, Cal Ripken, Sr., American baseball player, coach, and manager (b. 1936) dies at the age of 63 from lung cancer. He was a coach and manager in Major League Baseball who spent 36 years in the Baltimore Orioles organization, also as a player and scout. He played in the Orioles’ farm system beginning in 1957, and later served as manager of the parent club, on which his sons Cal Jr. and Billy played. Ripken’s 13-plus years in the Baltimore farm system was the longest tenure of any minor league manager in Orioles history. As a manager in the minor leagues for 13 years, Ripken won 964 games, and later compiled a 68-101 record managing the Orioles. Several of his students, including Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, and most prominently his son Cal Jr., went on to Hall of Fame careers.
In 2006, Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
In 2006, Buck Owens, American singer and guitarist (The Buckaroos) (b. 1929) died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack. He was born Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), but known professionally as Buck Owens. He was an American musician, singer and songwriter who had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music charts with his band the Buckaroos. They pioneered what came to be called the Bakersfield sound, a reference to Bakersfield, California, the city Owens called home and from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call American music. While Owens originally used fiddle and retained pedal steel guitar into the 1970s, his sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental, incorporating elements of rock and roll. His signature style was based on simple storylines, infectious choruses, a twangy electric guitar, an insistent rhythm supplied by a drum track placed forward in the mix, and high two-part harmonies featuring Owens and his guitarist Don Rich. Beginning in 1969, Owens co-hosted the TV series Hee Haw with Roy Clark. He left the cast in 1986. The accidental death of Rich, his best friend, in 1974 devastated him for years and abruptly halted his career until he performed with Dwight Yoakam in 1988. Owens died on March 25, 2006 shortly after performing at his Crystal Palace restaurant, club and museum in Bakersfield.
In 2006, Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.
In 2008, Convicted murderer and assisted suicide crusader Jack Kevorkian made his candidacy for a Detroit-area Congressional seat official. Kevorkian says his main agenda as a member of the august body would be promoting the Ninth Amendment as allowing a right to assisted suicide. State law required Kevorkian to gather 3,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot and he turned in papers with those signatures to local election officials. Kevorkian didn’t say much else about assisted suicide during the formal press announcement but accused the current government of being tyrannical. ”You’ve been trained to obey it, not fight it because the tyrant doesn’t like that,” Kevorkian said, according to an AP report. “I have no ties, no fetters. I am free,” the former pathologist added, saying he is beholden to no so-called special interests. He will run as an independent and will challenge Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a Republican who strongly opposes both abortion and euthanasia. Kevorkian received 8,987 votes (2.6% of the vote).
In 2008, A crackdown on guns is meeting some resistance in the District [of Columbia]. Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District’s gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday. . . . Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons. “Bad idea,” said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. “I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don’t even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest.”
In 2010, Treasury Secretary Geithner testified today that the federal government will continue to play a key role in the nation’s housing finance system as Congress begins to revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee that the two mortgage giants’ government-sponsored enterprise structure could not continue, especially after the federal government took them over two years ago and has committed to purchase more than $125 billion in preferred stock.
“Government has a key role to play in that new system, but its role, and the role of the GSEs in particular, will be fundamentally different from the role played in the past. Private gains can no longer be supported by the umbrella of public protection; capital standards must be higher; and excessive risk-taking must be appropriately restrained,” Geithner said in prepared remarks.
You might think that enough is enough for Geithner but not yet.
In 2012, Hal E. Chester, American actor, director, and producer (b. 1921) died in London, on March 25, 2012. He was an American film producer, writer, director and former child actor who appeared in the opening performance of “Dead End” on Broadway in 1937, playing the part of “Dippy” – one of the gang of kids later to gain fame as “The Dead End Kids” – going on the road with this hit play for 22 weeks, before accepting an offer to appear in the sequel to the film version “Crime School” for Warner Bros in 1938. As a teen actor, his most regular work was with “The Little Tough Guys” series for Universal, appearing also in “Juvenille Court” for Columbia, and “The Eastside Kids” for Monogram. His last appearance in this series was in “Sea Raiders” in 1941. Credited as “Hally Chester” when he first appeared on stage (he had taken the name of his step-mother ‘Chesler’) quickly becoming known as ‘Chester’.