Today in History, June 25

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1580 - Book of Concord, a collection of doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church, is first published.

1868 - Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina are readmitted to the Union.

1870 - Queen Isabella of Spain abdicates in favour of Alfonso XII.

1876 - At the Battle of Little Big Horn, Sioux Indians led by Chief Crazy Horse rout the US 7th Cavalry led by George Custer, who dies with his company of 264 men.

1903 - French scientist Marie Curie announces the discovery of radium. She and her husband Pierre later share the Nobel Prize for physics for the discovery but she dies in 1934 from radiation poisoning.

1910 - US Congress passes the White Slavery Act, more commonly known as the Mann Act, which outlaws the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes.

1938 - Gaelic scholar Douglas Hyde is inaugurated as the first president of the Irish Republic.

1950 - Korean War begins with North Korea's invasion of South Korea.

1951 - The first commercial colour telecast takes place as CBS transmits a one-hour special from New York to four other US cities.

1967 - The Beatles perform their new song All You Need Is Love during a live international telecast.

1975 - Mozambique becomes independent and Samora Machel is sworn in as president after 477 years of Portuguese rule.

1988 - In Laos, citizens go to the polls for the first elections since the communists took power in 1975.

1991 - The last Soviet troops stationed in Czechoslovakia leave the country, 23 years after the Warsaw Pact invasion.

1993 - Kim Campbell takes office as Canada's first female prime minister.

1995 - Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani overthrows his father, Sheik Khalifa, as emir of Qatar.

1996 - NSW state MP Barry Morris is jailed for two-and-a-half years over death threats to a Blue Mountains councillor.

2000 - A gas leak triggers a huge explosion at Kuwait's largest oil refinery at Mina al-Ahmadi, killing six people, injuring 50 others and forcing production to close.

2003 - US President George W Bush hosts European Union leaders at the White House for the annual US-EU summit. In a joint statement, both sides say they will agree to use "all means available" to block the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

2006 - Australian actress Nicole Kidman and country singer Keith Urban marry in Sydney.

2007 - The final British troops withdraw from the Northern Ireland borderland, ending a 37-year mission to keep watch over the Irish Republican Army's most dangerous power base.

2008 - Queen Elizabeth II strips Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe of his knighthood.

2009 - "King of Pop" Michael Jackson dies at 50.

2012 - Nineteen years after his parents were stabbed to death in their Sydney home, Jeffrey Gilham is acquitted of their murder. His older brother Christopher, 25, was stabbed to death in the same incident.

2013 - Russian President Vladimir Putin gives the first official acknowledgement of the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden - he's at Moscow airport after fleeing Hong Kong over the weekend - but rejects US pleas to turn him over.

2015 - House of Representatives Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ejects her 400th MP from the chamber, causing the federal opposition to raise fresh concerns about her performance; the death toll in the worst heatwave to hit Pakistan's southern city of Karachi for nearly 35 years passes 1000, as morgues run out of space.

2016 - Thousands of marriage equality supporters rally in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, urging Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to dump his proposed same-sex marriage plebiscite in the lead-up to the federal election.

2017 - An overturned oil tanker explodes in a huge fireball in Pakistan, killing more than 150 people who had rushed to the site to gather oil spilling from the vehicle.

Today's Birthdays:

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia (1796-1855); Lord Louis Mountbatten, English naval commander and statesman (1900-1979); George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair), British author (1903-1950); Harry Seidler, Australian architect (1923-2006); Sidney Lumet, US film director (1924-2011); June Lockhart, US actor (1925-); Eddie Floyd, US singer (1935-); Judy Pollock, Australian athlete (1940-); Carly Simon, US singer (1945-); Tim Finn, New Zealand singer-songwriter (1952-); Anthony Bourdain, American chef and author (1956-); Craig Johnston, Australian soccer player (1960-); Ricky Gervais, British comedian (1961-); George Michael, British singer (1963-2016); Mikhail Youzhny, Russian tennis player (1982-),

Thought For Today:

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity: romantic love and gunpowder - Andre Maurois, French biographer (1885-1967).

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