Today in history, July 25
Today in history, July 25
USA TODAYTue, July 7, 2026 at 6:34 PM UTC
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July 25
Today in history
Today is July 25. On this date in:
1668: A massive magnitude 8.5 earthquake rocked the Shandong Province of China, halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. It was one of the most destructive earthquakes in the country’s history, leveling everything in its wake. An estimated 43,000 to 50,000 people were killed.
1832: One man died and three others suffered serious injury when they were thrown off a vacant car on the Granite Railway near Quincy, Massachusetts, in the first recorded fatal railroad accident in U.S. history. The passengers were invited to watch laborers work on the railroad when a cable on their car snapped and they fell 34 feet off a cliff.
1868: The Wyoming Territory was established by Congress with land carved from the Dakotas, Idaho and Utah.
1898: U.S. forces led by Army Gen. Nelson Miles began an invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. By mid-August, Nelson had fully secured the island.
1952: With the establishment of its constitution, Puerto Rico attained self-government as an unincorporated commonwealth of the United States, 54 years after it was invaded by U.S. forces.
1956: Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner MS Stockholm collided in a heavy Atlantic fog 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. The two ships crashed at an almost 90-degree angle and the collision ripped a hole in the Andrea Doria’s starboard side; 51 lives were lost.
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1969: During a tour of Asia, President Richard Nixon announced that the United States “would assist in the defense and developments of allies and friends” in conflicts but ensure that nations tend to their own defenses. Known as the Nixon Doctrine, it was a foreign policy created at the height of the Vietnam War and formally led to the “Vietnamization” of that war.
1978: The world’s first in vitro fertilization baby, Louise Joy Brown, was born to parents Lesley and Peter Brown in Manchester, England. She was delivered via caesarean section and weighed just under 6 pounds.
1984: Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to do a spacewalk, conducting an extravehicular activity for 3 hours and 35 minutes outside the Salyut 7 space station.
1985: Representatives for former Hollywood leading man Rock Hudson, who appeared in more than 60 films during his career, announced that he had contracted acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. His announcement marked the first time a celebrity went public with AIDS and raised awareness for the disease.
2000: Concorde Air France Flight 4590 crashed immediately after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris, killing 113 people.
2007: Pratibha Patil was sworn in as India’s 12th president, becoming the first woman to be elected to that office. She had won nearly two thirds of the vote.
2010: Wikileaks released the Afghan War Diary, a huge cache of classified military war files surrounding the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. The leak contained over 91,000 logs on the Afghan war, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2009.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, July 25
Source: “AOL Breaking”
