August 25 in History

Historical Events on August 25

1814 War of 1812: On the second day of the Burning of Washington, British troops torch the Library of Congress, United States Treasury, Department of War, and other public buildings.

1914 World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.

1920 Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, which began on August 13, ends with the Red Army's defeat.

1940 World War II: The first Bombing of Berlin by the British Royal Air Force.

1950 President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.

1980 Zimbabwe joins the United Nations.

1991 Belarus gains its independence from the Soviet Union.

2001 American singer Aaliyah and several members of her record company are killed as their overloaded aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Marsh Harbour Airport, Bahamas.

2017 Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2004. The storm causes catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern Texas, killing 90 people and causing $198.6 billion in damage.

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Famous Birthdays on August 25

1912 Erich Honecker

1918 Leonard Bernstein

1930 Sean Connery

1954 Elvis Costello

All Births

Famous Deaths on August 25

1776 David Hume

1900 Friedrich Nietzsche

2001 Aaliyah

2009 Ted Kennedy

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