Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia
The Mercury, Australia
Feb 24 2005
On this day
25feb05
1988 – Thousands demonstrate in Soviet Armenia despite directive to
local authorities to restore order.
1308 – Edward II is enthroned as King of England.
1545 – Scots defeat English forces at Ancrum Moor.
1570 – England’s Queen Elizabeth I is excommunicated by Pope Pius V.
1601 – England’s Earl of Essex is executed for treason.
1713 – Sweden’s King Charles XII is taken prisoner by Sultan of
Turkey.
1723 – Death of Sir Christopher Wren, English architect and designer.
1836 – American inventor Samuel Colt patents his revolver.
1841 – Explorer Edward John Eyre leaves Fowlers Bay in South
Australia on an overland trip around the Great Australian Bight.
1899 – Death in France of Paul Julius Reuter, German founder of the
international news agency that bears his name.
1914 – Death of Sir John Tenniel, English artist and illustrator of
Alice in Wonderland.
1948 – Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.
1954 – Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser usurps power as president of Egypt;
Syria’s President Chickekli flees following army revolt.
1956 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev goes before Communist Party
congress in Moscow and denounces late dictator Joseph Stalin.
1961 – Sydney’s last tram runs, to La Perouse in the eastern suburbs.
1964 – Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) becomes world heavyweight boxing
champion for the first time by knocking out Sonny Liston in Miami.
1969 – NSW Legislative Council expels Country Party member AE
Armstrong for “unworthy business conduct” for his part in helping
secure divorce evidence for another member.
1972 – Soviet Union’s Luna 20 spacecraft returns to earth with
samples of the Moon’s surface; President Kenneth Kaunda announces his
cabinet’s decision to impose a one-party state in Zambia.
1976 – United States vetoes UN resolution deploring Israel’s
annexation of Jerusalem.
1982 – Australian Government announces decision to purchase HMS
Invincible from England.
1983 – Death of Tennessee Williams, US playwright.
1986 – Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos resigns, brought down
by a “people’s power” uprising, military revolt, and US pressure.
1987 – Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslims bury 23 militants killed by
Syrian soldiers in Lebanon, and claim they were massacred with axes
and bayonets.
1988 – Thousands demonstrate in Soviet Armenia despite directive to
local authorities to restore order.
1990 – At least 60 people are killed in India as violence mars
elections in eight states.
1991 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein orders his forces, under attack
by allied ground troops, to withdraw from Kuwait. An Iraqi Scud
missile hits a US marine barracks near the Saudi city of Dhahran,
killing 28 soldiers and wounding several others.
1992 – Imelda Marcos accepts Philippine government conditions for
returning her husband’s body.
1993 – US Marines and Nigerian soldiers blast at snipers in central
Mogadishu, Somalia, in a five-hour battle that kills one Somali; Kim
Young-sam is sworn in as South Korea’s first civilian president for
32 years.
1994 – Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, armed with an automatic rifle
and hand grenades, kills 40 Muslims at a mosque in Hebron, before
being beaten to death.
1995 – Two bombs blow apart a train car reserved for the military in
north-eastern India, killing at least 26 soldiers and wounding more
than 30.
1996 – Haing Ngor, a Cambodian refugee whose Academy Award-winning
performance in the film The Killing Fields mirrored his own ordeal at
the hands of the Khmer Rouge, is murdered in the US.
1997 – President Jiang Zemin delivers a final eulogy for leader Deng
Xiaoping, vowing that China’s opening to the outside world will
continue; Two days after a gunman goes on a fatal rampage at the
Empire State Building in New York, the observatory reopens with metal
detectors.
1998 – Death aged 90 of Italian abstract artist Luigi Veronesi, who
designed sets at Milan’s prestigious La Scala theatre; Death aged 82
of BA (Bob) Santamaria, Australian anti-communist crusader, political
commentator and Catholic intellectual.
1999 – China vetoes an extension of the UN peacekeeping mission in
Macedonia, which borders war-torn Kosovo province. Macedonia had
established diplomatic relations with Taiwan a month earlier.
2000 – Four white New York City police officers who killed unarmed
African immigrant Amadou Diallo in a barrage of 41 bullets are
acquitted of all charges.
2001 – The commander of the US submarine that struck and sank a
Japanese trawler off Hawaii expresses his “most sincere regret” – but
Commander Scott Waddle stops short of an apology.
2001 – Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest batsman in Test cricket
history and Australia’s most revered sporting figure, dies. He was
92.
2002 – The driver of a cash transport truck overpowers his partner
and drives off with a record $US8.7 million ($14.68 million) in euro
bills in Germany’s financial capital of Frankfurt. The robbery comes
in the wake of two similar ones in five months.
2003 – Two bomb blasts damage the Colombian consulate and Spanish
Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela; five people are wounded. The
explosions come two days after President Hugo Chavez Frias accuses
Spain and Colombia of meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
2004 – The Czech parliament decides to send more than 100 soldiers to
Afghanistan in the first combat role for the Czech armed forces since
World War Two.