The first railroad accident

In a macabre instance of rough frontier justice, California Rangers inspired by a $6,000 award bring in the severed head—preserved in whiskey—of outlaw Joaquín Murrieta. Or at least that’s what they claimed. In the early months of 1853, a wild band of desperadoes began terrorizing Calaveras County in central California. Law officers believed a shadowy […]

On July 25, 1897, 21-year-old Jack London leaves for the Klondike region of far-northern Canada to join the gold rush, where he will write his first successful stories. London was born in San Francisco in 1876. His father, an astrologer named Chaney, abandoned the family, and his mother, a spiritualist and music teacher, remarried. Jack […]

In Paris, France, on July 25, 1917, the exotic dancer and suspected secret agent Mata Hari is sentenced to death by a French court for purportedly spying on Germany’s behalf during World War I. Since 1903, Margueretha Gertruida Zelle, born in a small town in northern Holland and formerly married to a captain in the […]

On July 25, 1943, Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, is voted out of power by his own Grand Council and arrested upon leaving a meeting with King Vittorio Emanuele, who tells Il Duce that the war is lost. Mussolini responded to it all with an uncharacteristic meekness. During the evening of July 24 and […]

On July 25, 1961, in a televised address to the American people about the Berlin Crisis, President John F. Kennedy speaks soberly about the need for nuclear fallouts shelters. He announces that he has instructed Congress to identify spaces that could be used as bomb shelters, and to stock them with “minimal essentials for survival” […]

President Richard Nixon announces that henceforth the United States will expect its Asian allies to tend to their own military defense. The Nixon Doctrine, as the president’s statement came to be known, clearly indicated his determination to “Vietnamize” the Vietnam War. When Richard Nixon took office in early 1969, the United States had been at […]

The body of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton is found in a wooded area of Rosedale, Maryland, near her home. The young girl had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. Unfortunately, Hamilton and her family were not the only ones to suffer because of this terrible crime. After witnesses saw a suspicious man in […]

On July 25, 1992, the opening ceremonies of the Games of the XXV Olympiad are held in Barcelona, Spain. The Barcelona Olympics were the first ever in which professional athletes were allowed to participate, and the first Games since 1972 in which every member nation of the International Olympic Committee competed. In all, 169 countries […]