April 25 historic events
1719 Daniel Defoes publishes “Robinson Crusoe”.
1846 Thornton Affair: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.
1859 British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.
1862 American Civil War: Forces under Union Admiral David Farragut capture the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
1881 250,000 Germans petition to bar foreign Jews from entering Germany.
1898 Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain.
1901 New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates. The fee is $1.
1904 New York Yankee Jack Chesbro’s 1st of 41 wins this year.
A huge loss of life for both sides, with little accomplished.
1939 DC Comics publishes its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; he is Batman, one of the most popular comic book superheroes of all time.
If you were fortunate enough to buy that comic book, and still have it, you can probably trade it in for a very nice house.
1945 Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.
1952 American Bowling Congress approves use of an automatic pinsetter.
1953 Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.
1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.
1961 Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.
1975 As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
1982 Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula per the Camp David Accords.
As a result of the unprecedented give-back, the Arab world offers congratulations to Israel for their concession, and extends diplomatic recognition to the Jewish state. Yeah, right.
1983 American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.
Old KGBer Andropov wins worldwide PR points for the invitation. Samantha Smith became famous as a result of her letter and visit, and a TV show was created for her to star in. Sadly, she and her father died in a plane crash a couple of years later.
1983 Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto’s orbit.
The Pioneer 10 is the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
1988 In Israel, John Demjanuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II.
1990 The Hubble Telescope is deployed into orbit from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
2003 The Human Genome Project comes to an end 2.5 years before first anticipated.