History of the Day for:
October 25
- 1492: Christopher Columbus and his ship Santa Maria landed in the Dominican Republic.
- 1825: The Erie Canal opened, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
- 1854: In the Crimean War, Lord Cardigan led the cavalry "Charge of the Light Brigade" against the Russians at Balaclava, one of the most heroic episodes in British military history.
- 1881: Sheriff Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the Clanton gang engaged in the "Shootout at the O.K. Corral." Surrealist artist Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain (d: 1973).
- 1906: U.S. inventor Lee de Forest patented his "Audion," a three-diode amplification valve which proved a pioneering development in radio and broadcasting.
- 1917: In Russia, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power.
- 1924: The "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip was first published.
- 1940: U.S. Army Gen. Benjamin Davis became the first black general.
- 1944: The Battle in the Gulf of Leyte ended with the Japanese fleet destroyed.
- 1955: Austria resumed its sovereignty after the departure of the last Allied occupation forces, for the first time since the German occupation of 1938. Tappan sold the first microwave oven.
- 1962: Adlai Stevenson furnished photographic evidence to the U.N. Security Council of Russian missile bases in Cuba. John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in literature.
- 1971: The United Nations General Assembly voted to expel Chinese Nationalist-ruled Taiwan and admit communist China.
- 1974: The U.S. Air Force test-fired the first ICBM.
- 1983: Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
- 1984: The Hepatitis virus was discovered.
- 1991: History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People's Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
- 1992: Lithuania holds a referendum on its first post-Soviet constitution.
- 1995: A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
- 1997: After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.
- 2004: Fidel Castro, Cuba's President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned by November 8.
- 2007: The first Airbus A380 passenger flight, operating for Singapore Airlines, with flight number SQ 380, flying scheduled service between Singapore and Sydney, Australia.