On this day: Michael Jackson died

Events, birthdays and anniversaries for 25 June
On this day in 2009 music fans gathered outside a New York theatre on hearing that pop superstar Michael Jackson had died. Picture: GettyOn this day in 2009 music fans gathered outside a New York theatre on hearing that pop superstar Michael Jackson had died. Picture: Getty
On this day in 2009 music fans gathered outside a New York theatre on hearing that pop superstar Michael Jackson had died. Picture: Getty

1595: The Earl of Tyrone was proclaimed a traitor for his rebellion in Ireland.

1867: The first patent for barbed wire was taken out by Lucien Smith of Kent, Ohio.

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1891: The first Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle was published in Strand magazine.

1894: France’s president MF Sadi-Carnot was assassinated by an Italian anarchist at Lyons.

1920: The Hague was made the permanent seat of the International Court of Justice.

1942: The RAF carried out a 1,000-bomb raid on Bremen.

1944: Battle of Caen began.

1945: The United Nations Organisation was founded.

1948: Joe Louis made the record 25th defence of his heavyweight boxing title, knocking out Joe Walcott.

1950: The Korean War began when Communist forces of the north crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nearly five million troops and civilians died in the three-year war.

1953: John Christie was sentenced to death for the murder of four women. He was believed to have killed three other women, including Beryl Evans and her daughter in 1950, for which Timothy Evans was found guilty and hanged.

1959: Eamon de Valera assumed office as president of the Republic of Ireland.

1969: Pancho Gonzalez and Charlie Pasarell played a record 112-game singles match, on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. It lasted five hours 12 minutes. Gonzalez, aged 41, won.

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1975: Mozambique became fully independent after a ten-year war against Portuguese colonial domination.

1978: Yemen’s president, Ahmed Hussein Ghashami, was assassinated by bomb planted in an envoy’s briefcase.

1988: A landslide buried about 100 people in Turkish mountain village of Catak.

1989: The world Wide Fund for Nature issued a warning that it was illegal to pick wild gladioli, found in the New Forest, Hampshire. They are one of the few flower species left that are pollinated by butterflies.

1990: An IRA bomb injured seven at the Carlton Club, London.

1990: Seven thousand king penguins killed themselves on uninhabited sub-Antarctic Macquaine Island. The reason remains a mystery.

1991: Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia, triggering conflict.

1994: John Major used his right of veto to block the appointment of Belgian Jean-Luc Dehaene as the next president of the European Commission.

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1997: Jonathan Aitken, a former Cabinet minister, resigned from the Privy Council, as Scotland Yard investigated allegations that he had committed perjury and conspired to pervert the course of justice during a libel action against the Guardian newspaper and Granada TV.

2008: The Queen stripped president Robert Mugabe of his honorary knighthood “as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights” in Zimbabwe.

2009: Pop superstar Michael Jackson died after suffering a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles.

2011: A parade of 2,500 military personnel, veterans and cadets took place in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

BIRTHDAYS

Neil Lennon, football manager, 43; Sir Peter Blake CBE, pop artist, 82; Tim Finn OBE, singer/songwriter, 62; Ricky Gervais, comedian, actor and writer, 53; Iestyn Harris, rugby player, 38; Johnny Herbert, racing driver, 50; Rhoda Lewis, actress, 81; Eddie Large, Glasgow-born comedian (of Little & Large duo), 73; Roy Marsden, actor, 73; George Michael, singer, 51; Greg Raymer, professional poker player, 50; Carly Simon, singer and songwriter, 69; Patrick Tambay, French racing driver, 65; Sheridan Smith, actress, 33; Jamie Redknapp, TV football pundit and former England internationalist, 41; Victor Wanyama, footballer, 23; Lucy Benjamin, actress (EastEnders), 44; Phil Jupitus, comedian, 52.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1870 Robert Erskine Childers, author (Riddle of the Sands) and Irish nationalist; 1894 Hermann Oberth, rocket pioneer; 1900 Earl Mountbatten of Burma, admiral and commander; 1903 Eric Blair (George Orwell), novelist (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four); 1918 PH Newby, novelist.

Deaths: 1634 John Marston, playwright and satirist; 1767 Georg Telemann, composer; 1876 Colonel George Armstrong Custer, in battle at Little Big Horn; 1897 Margaret Oliphant, author; 1937 Colin Clive (Clive Grieg), actor; 1968 Tony Hancock, comedy actor (suicide); 1976 Johnny Mercer (John Herndon), songwriter; 1997 Jacques Cousteau, underwater explorer and inventor of aqualung; 2009 Farrah Fawcett, actress; 2009 Michael Jackson, pop singer; 2010 Alan Plater CBE, scriptwriter (Z Cars); 2011 Margaret Tyzack OBE, British actress.

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