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“Thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Wikiquote (Friedrich Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) a German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and aphorism.)
August 25th, 357
Battle of Strasbourg: Julian, Caesar (deputy emperor) and supreme commander of the Roman army in Gaul , wins an important victory against the Alemanni at Strasbourg (Argentoratum).
Wikipedia Photo: Reconstruction of the 7th century parade helmet found in the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon royal burial site.
August 25th, 450
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
450 - Pulcheria becomes empress of the Byzantine Empire after her brother Theodosius II is killed during a hunting accident.
Wikipedia Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
Theodora, detail of a Byzantine mosaic in Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna.
August 25th, 1609
Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
Wikipedia Painting: Fresco by Giuseppe Bertini depicting Galileo showing the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope
August 25th, 1758
Seven Years' War:
1758 - Battle of Zorndorf; Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Russian army.
Wikipedia Painting: The Death of General Wolfe (1771) by Benjamin West, depicting the Battle of the Plains of Abraham; Battle of Hochkirch; Battle of Minorca of May 20, 1756, shortly after the French landing on Minorca; Siege of Kolberg (1761); Leibgarde battalion at Kolin, 1757; Battle of Zorndorf in August 1758 where Russian and Prussian armies suffered heavy casualties and both claimed a victory. Battle of Lagos, by Théodore Gudin.
August 25th, 1768
James Cook begins his first voyage.
Wikipedia Painting: James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, c. 1775, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; British explorer James Cook's ship was named the HMS Endeavour; Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth, credit National Library of Australia (NLA) digital collections; Captain James Cook (1728-1779) is shown meeting Nootka leader Muquinna (died 1798) at Nootka Sound on what is now Vancouver Island, in 1778, during his explorations of Canada’s northwest coast, credit Canadian Military History.
August 25th, 1875
Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England to Calais, France in 22 hours.
Wikipedia Photo: Portrait of Captain Matthew Webb Matthew - Separating the Northern France and Southern England lies the English Channel also joining the North Sea to the Atlantic
August 25th, 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 of Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.
Wikipedia Painting: The Catholic University of Leuven (K.U. Leuven)
August 25th, 1916
United States National Park Service is created.
Wikipedia Photo: Devils Postpile National Monument U.S. National Park Service
August 25th, 1920
Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw; began on August 13, ends. The (from Red Army is defeated.
Wikipedia Image: Lithuania (Republic of Lithuania) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. ● Trakai Island Castle Photo: ● Hill of Crosses (more than 50,000 crosses, not a cemetery) ● Vilnius ● Battle of Grunwald and Vytautas the Great in the centre.
August 25th, 1939
United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the UK promises to defend Poland in case of invasion by a foreign power.
Wikipedia Photo: United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance
August 25th, 1942
World War II:
1942 - Battle of Milne Bay; Papua New Guinea.
1942 - Second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons; Japanese naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal is turned-back by an Allied air attack, losing one destroyer and one transport sunk, and one light cruiser heavily damaged.
1944 - Allied troops liberate Paris.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943. Liberation of Paris; Parisians line the Champs Élysées as French 2e DB tanks and half tracks pass before the Arc de Triomphe on 26 August.
August 25th, 1948
House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
Wikipedia Photo: House Un-American Activities Committee.
August 25th, 1981
Voyager 2 spacecraft:
1981 - Makes its closest approach to Saturn.
1989 - Makes its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System.
Wikipedia Photo: Voyager 2 Launch, sending back tens of thousands of images. NASA
August 25th, 1991
Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.
Wikipedia Photo: Linux - free and open source software
August 25th, 1997
Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, is convicted of a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.
Wikipedia Photo: Former East German head of state and party leader, Egon Krenz was released from prison on December 18, 2003, after serving just 4 years for involvement in state shootings.
August 25th, 2012
Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.
Wikipedia Image: Artist's concept NASA's Voyager spacecraft two NASA's Voyager spacecraft are traveling farther and farther away from Earth, on a journey to interstellar space, and will eventually circle around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. (NASA)
August 25th, 2017
Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Catexgory 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 108 people and causing $125 billion in damage.
Wikipedia Image: Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Catexgory 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 108 people and causing $125 billion in damage. (NOAA)