July 25th in History

306   Constantine the Great, aka Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops, and is the first Christian Roman emperor, later becoming St. Constantine in the Eastern Orthodox church.  He initiated a policy of religious tolerance, and ended Christian persecution.  He also shifted the Roman capital from Rome to Constantinople,which remained the capital of the eastern Roman empire for a millenium.

1261   The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.

Henri IV

1593   Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestant Calvinism to Roman Catholicism, uttering the famous words 'Paris vaut bien une messe', Paris is worth a mass, in an effort to resolve the French religious wars of the era.  He was later assassinated by a fanatic Roman Catholic.

1722   The Three Years War begins along the Maine and Massachusetts border between the French and the English.  The Three Years War, aka Dummer's War aka the 4th Indian War, and other names was significant in establishing the colonial claims to the territory that later became part of the original 13 states instead of Canada.  The ill will over the series of wars, in turn, was one factor in the French helping the American colonists in rebellion against the English.

1755   British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council order the deportation of the Acadians. Thousands of Acadians are sent to the British Colonies in America, France and England. Some later move to Louisiana, while others resettle in New Brunswick.  Those in Louisiana become known as 'Cajuns, short for Acadians.  It was an attempt to remove the French settlers, a kind of ethnic cleansing.  Approximately a third died.  Acadia was renamed Nova Scotia or 'New Scotland' by the British.

1758  As part of the Seven Years' War: the island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken, as the English tried to drive the French out of the territory which became Canada.

1759   French and Indian War: in Western New York, British forces capture Fort Niagara from the French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé. More of the British expansion into French territory.

1799   At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha, and was in turn defeated by the British under Admiral Horatio Nelson.

1837 – The first commercial use of an electric telegraph is successfully demonstrated by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone on 25 July 1837 between Euston and Camden Town in London.

Wyoming flag

1861 – American Civil War: the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution is passed by the U.S. Congress stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.

1868 – Wyoming becomes a United States territory, later becoming a state in July, 1890.

1870  Birth of Maxfield Parrish, American illustrator.

1898 – The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with U.S. troops led by General Nelson Miles landing at harbor of Guánica, Puerto Rico (The land invasion, proper, began that day: Sea-based bombardment and shelling of the capital city of San Juan had been occurring since May 1898).

1907 – Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan.

1909 – Louis Blériot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from (Calais to Dover) in 37 minutes.

1917 – Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1920 – The first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast takes place.

1934 – The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.

1940 – General Guisan orders the Swiss Army to resist German invasion and makes surrender illegal.

1942 – Norwegian Manifesto calls for nonviolent resistance to the Nazis.

1943 – Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.

1952 – The U.S. non-incorporated colonial territory of Puerto Rico adopts a "constitution" of local-limited powers, approved by the United States Congress in contravention of then-current International Law.

1959 – SR-N1 hovercraft crosses the English Channel from Calais to Dover in just over 2 hours.

1969 – Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This is the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.

1973 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.

1978 – Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube baby", conceived through in vitro fertilization, is born.

1979 – Another section of the Sinai peacefully returned by Israel to Egypt.

1984 – Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.

1993 – Israel launches a massive attack against terrorist forces in Lebanon in what the Israelis call Operation Accountability, and the Lebanese call Seven-Day War.

1994 – Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration, which formally ends the state of war that had existed between the nations since 1948.

1995 A U.N. war crimes tribunal indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, and 22 other Serbs for war crimes.