Directory

1925 CE

The 1925 serum run to Nome sees mushers race across Alaska to deliver life-saving diphtheria antitoxin, capturing global attention; the deadly 1925 Tri-State tornado sweeps through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 and becoming the deadliest U.S. tornado; the Great Syrian Revolt erupts as Syrian nationalists rise against French rule; the Scopes Trial in Tennessee sparks a nationwide debate on evolution and religion in public education; the St. Nedelya Church bombing in Sofia, Bulgaria, kills hundreds during a funeral, escalating political violence; and the Locarno Treaties are signed to secure peace and stabilize postwar borders in Western Europe.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 5 – Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor (Wyoming) in the United States. Fifteen days later, Miriam A. Ferguson becomes first female governor of Texas.source
  • March 4 – İsmet İnönü is appointed prime minister in Turkey (Turkey's 4th and İnönü's 3rd government).source
  • May 5 – The General Election Law is passed in Japan, extending suffrage to all males aged 25 and over.source
  • July 25 – The Temporary Slavery Commission of the League of Nations files its report on their global investigation of slavery and the slave trade, preparing the ground for the introduction of the 1926 Slavery Convention.source
  • October 5–16 – The Locarno Treaties are negotiated.source
  • November 14 – 1925 Australian federal election: Stanley Bruce's Nationalist/Country Coalition Government is re-elected with an increased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by Matthew Charlton.source
  • December 1 – The Locarno Treaties are signed in London, intended to secure the post-war continental European territorial settlement.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 1 – The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria.source
  • January 3 – Benito Mussolini makes a pivotal speech in the Italian Chamber of Deputies which will be regarded by historians as the beginning of his dictatorship.source
  • March 1 – New York City Fire Department Rescue 2 is put in service in Brooklyn.source
  • March 9–May 1 – Pink's War: The British Royal Air Force bombards mountain strongholds of Mahsud tribesmen in South Waziristan.source
  • April 16 – A communist assault on St Nedelya Church claims roughly 150 lives in Sofia, Bulgaria.source
  • April 20 – Iranian forces of Reza Shah occupy Ahvaz and arrest Sheikh Khazʽal Ibn Jabir.source
  • July 18 – Adolf Hitler publishes Volume 1 of his personal manifesto Mein Kampf in Germany.source
  • August 25 – The French complete their evacuation of the Ruhr region of Germany.source
  • October 19–29 – Incident at Petrich: A brief conflict occurs between Bulgaria and Greece after a Greek soldier accidentally crosses into the Bulgarian side and is shot by border guards.source
  • November 9 – Formal foundation date of the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler in Germany.source
  • New York City becomes the largest city in the world, taking the lead from London.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • Frank Heath and his horse Gypsy Queen leave Washington, D.C. to begin a two-year journey to visit all 48 states.source
  • May 29 – English explorer Percy Fawcett sends a last telegram to his wife before he disappears in the Amazon.source
  • July 21 – English racing motorist Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to exceed 150 mph 0 on land when at Pendine Sands in Wales he drives a Sunbeam 350HP automobile at a two-way average speed of 150.33 mph 0.source
  • August 31 – Anthropologist Margaret Mead lands in American Samoa to begin nine months of field work that will culminate in her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa. The bestselling book will become the first popular anthropological study and will change many attitudes towards tribal peoples.source
  • November 17 – The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition, a world's fair, opens in Dunedin, New Zealand.source
  • December 12 – The first motel in the world, the Milestone Mo-Tel (later the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo), opens in San Luis Obispo, California.source

Religion & Belief

  • May 1 – In the Destruction of early Islamic heritage sites in Saudi Arabia, the al-Baqi' mausoleums are destroyed by King Ibn Saud.source
  • December 11 – Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas primas, on the Feast of Christ the King, is promulgated.source
  • Islamic Bektashi Order lodges in Turkey are closed down by order of the country's President, Atatürk, and the leadership moves to Albania.source
  • Ernest Blythe, Minister for Finance in the Irish Free State, arranges an annual government subsidy of £850 for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, making it the first state-supported theatre in the English-speaking world.source

Economy & Finance

  • January 25 – Hjalmar Branting resigns as Prime Minister of Sweden because of ill health, and is replaced by the minister of trade, Rickard Sandler.source
  • December 25 – IG Farben is formed by the merger of six chemical companies in Germany.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • February 25 – Art Gillham records (for Columbia Records) the first Western Electric masters to be commercially released.source
  • April 1 – In the United States:source
  • The Patent and Trademark Office is transferred to the Department of Commerce.source
  • June 6 – The Chrysler Corporation is founded as an automobile manufacturer by Walter Chrysler in the United States.source
  • June 13 – American engineer Charles Francis Jenkins achieves the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound, using 48 lines and a mechanical system in "the first public demonstration of radiovision".source
  • July 10 – Meher Baba begins his 44-year silence.source
  • July 25 – The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.source
  • August 1 – The New Cape Central Railway between Worcester and Voorbaai is incorporated into the South African Railways.source
  • August 14 – The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse in California is completed and goes on line.source
  • October 2 – In London, UK, John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image.source
  • November 28 – The weekly country music-variety radio programme Grand Ole Opry is first broadcast on WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee, as the "WSM Barn Dance".source

Science & Discovery

  • July 29 – Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan published their Umdeutung paper, reporting a breakthrough in quantum physics, in Zeitschrift für Physik in Germany.source

Health & Medicine

  • January 27–February 1 – The 1925 serum run to Nome (the "Great Race of Mercy") relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. Territory of Alaska to combat an epidemic.source

Crime & Justice

  • April 15 – Fritz Haarmann, a serial killer convicted of the murder of 24 boys and young men, is guillotined in Germany.source
  • April–October – The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes is held in Paris, giving a name to the Art Deco style.source
  • August 8 – The Ku Klux Klan, the largest fraternal racist organization in the United States, demonstrates its popularity by holding a parade with an estimated 30,000-35,000 marchers in Washington, D.C.source
  • October – The major money forgery and fraud of Alves dos Reis is exposed in Portugal.source
  • November 24 – The silent film El Húsar de la Muerte is released in Santiago, Chile.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • March 31 – The Bauhaus closes in Weimar and moves to a building in Dessau designed by Walter Gropius.source
  • May 8 – African-American Tom Lee rescues 32 people from the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman on the Mississippi River.source
  • September 3 – The U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah breaks up in a squall line near Caldwell, Ohio, killing 14 crewmen.source
  • October 4 – S2, a Finnish Sokol class torpedo boat, is sunk during a fierce storm near the coast of Pori in the Gulf of Bothnia, taking with her the whole crew of 53.source

Climate & Environment

  • February 28 – The 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.source
  • March 16 – At 22:42 local time a 7.0 earthquake shakes the Chinese province of Yunnan killing 5,000 people.source
  • March 18 – The Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest in U.S. history, rampages through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027. It hits the towns of Murphysboro, Illinois; West Frankfort, Illinois; Gorham, Illinois; Ellington, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana.source
  • June 29 – The 6.8 Santa Barbara earthquake affects the central coast of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), destroying much of downtown Santa Barbara, California and leaving 13 people dead.source

Culture & Society

  • March 6 – Pionerskaya Pravda, one of the oldest children's newspapers in Europe, is founded in the Soviet Union.source
  • March 15 – The Phi Lambda Chi fraternity (original name "The Aztecs") is founded on the campus of Arkansas State Teachers' College in Conway, Arkansas (the modern-day University of Central Arkansas).source
  • March 21 – Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortilèges, to a libretto by Colette, is premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.source
  • April 10 – F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York.source
  • April 19 – Colo-colo, a well-known football club of Chile, is founded in Macul, suburb of Santiago.source
  • April 28 – Presenting the Stanley Baldwin government's budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announces Britain's return to the gold standard.source
  • May 1 – The All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the world's largest trade union organisation, is founded in Guangzhou, Republic of China.source
  • May 16 – The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1639/40) takes place in Paris.source
  • June 14 – The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece is founded.source
  • June 14 – The Turkish football club Göztepe is founded.source
  • September 27 – Feast of the Cross according to the Old Calendar: a celestial cross appears over Athens, Greece, while the Greek police pursues a group of Greek Old Calendarists. The phenomenon lasts for half an hour.source
  • October 1 – The United States Congress grants permission for Gutzon Borglum to begin constructing Mount Rushmore National Memorial on federal land in South Dakota.source
  • November 14 – The first Surrealist art exhibition opens in Paris.source
  • November 26 – Prajadhipok (Rama VII) is crowned as King of Siam.source
  • December 14 – Wozzeck, Alban Berg's first opera, is premiered at the Berlin State Opera conducted by Erich Kleiber.source
  • December 15 – Reza Shah takes the oath to become the first shah of Persia of the Pahlavi dynasty.source
  • Lion Feuchtwanger's novel Jud Süß (translated as Jew Süss or Power) is published in Germany.source

Births

  • January 14 – Yukio Mishima, Japanese writer (d. 1970)source
  • January 26 – Paul Newman, American actor, film director, entrepreneur and philanthropist (d. 2008)source
  • May 19 – Malcolm X, African-American civil rights activist (d. 1965)source
  • May 23 – Joshua Lederberg, American molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2008)source
  • June 8 – Barbara Bush, First Lady of the United States (d. 2018)source
  • June 20 – Audie Murphy, American World War II hero and actor (d. 1971)source
  • June 29 – Giorgio Napolitano, Italian politician and 11th President of Italy (d. 2023)source
  • July 28 – Baruch Samuel Blumberg, American scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2011)source
  • October 16 – Dame Angela Lansbury, Irish-British-born American actress (d. 2022)source
  • October 23 – Johnny Carson, American comedian and television host (d. 2005)source
  • November 10 – Richard Burton, Welsh actor, better known for his role in Cleopatra (d. 1984)source
  • November 20 – Robert F. Kennedy, American politician, Attorney General of the United States and a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate (d. 1968)source
  • November 24 – William F. Buckley Jr., American journalist, author and commentator (d. 2008)source
  • December 8 – Sammy Davis Jr., American singer, dancer, musician and actor (d. 1990)source

Deaths

  • February 28 – Friedrich Ebert, 1st President of Germany (1919–1945) (b. 1871)source
  • March 20 – George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India (b. 1859)source
  • March 30 – Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher (b. 1861)source
  • May 13 – Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, British politician and colonial administrator (b. 1854)source
  • May 21 – The opera Doktor Faust, unfinished when composer Ferruccio Busoni died, is premiered in Dresden.source
  • May 22 – John French, 1st Earl of Ypres, British World War I field marshal (b. 1852)source
  • June 1 – Thomas R. Marshall, 28th Vice President of the United States (b. 1854)source
  • July 4 – Pier Giorgio Frassati, Italian Roman Catholic social activist and blessed (b. 1901)source
  • September 17 – Carl Eytel, German-American artist working in Palm Springs, California (b. 1862)source
  • October 7 – Christy Mathewson, American baseball player and MLB Hall of Famer (b. 1880)source
  • October 20 – Jonah of Hankou, Russian Orthodox priest and saint (b. 1888)source
  • November 20 – Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, consort of King Edward VII (b. 1844)source
  • November 26 – King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) of Siam (b. 1880)source
  • December 5 – Władysław Reymont, Polish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1867)source