Young Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston for first world title

On February 25, 1779, Fort Sackville is surrendered, marking the beginning of the end of British domination in America’s western frontier. Eighteen days earlier, George Rogers Clark departed Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River with a force of approximately 170 men, including Kentucky militia and French volunteers. The party traveled over 200 miles of land covered […]

On February 25, 1862, the U.S. Congress passes the Legal Tender Act, authorizing the use of paper notes to pay the government’s bills. This ended the long-standing policy of using only gold or silver in transactions, and it allowed the government to finance the enormously costly Civil War long after its gold and silver reserves […]

On February 25, 1940, the first telecast of a National Hockey League game is transmitted over New York’s W2XBS—the National Broadcasting Company’s experimental station used to test TV technology. A viewing audience estimated at 300 subscribers watches the New York Rangers defeat the Montreal Canadiens, 6-2, at Madison Square Garden. During the first, crude telecast, winger […]

On February 25, 1956, Sylvia Plath meets her future husband, Ted Hughes, at a party in Cambridge, UK. The two poets fell in love at first sight and married four months later. Plath was born in 1932, the daughter of an autocratic German father who taught biology and was a leading expert on bumblebees. Plath’s father […]

The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s controversial film about the last 44 hours of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, opens in theaters across the United States on February 25, 2004. Not coincidentally, the day was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Catholic season of Lent. The star of action-packed blockbusters like the Lethal Weapon series […]