Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 25
August 25: Independence Day in Uruguay (1825).
- 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, currently the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, was formed by Royal Charter from King Henry VIII.
- 1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (pictured) demonstrated his first telescope, a device that became known as a terrestrial or spyglass refracting telescope, to Venetian lawmakers.
- 1875 – Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England to Calais, France in less than 22 hours.
- 1920 – Polish forces under Józef Piłsudski successfully forced the Russians to withdraw from Warsaw at the Battle of Warsaw, the decisive battle of the Polish-Soviet War.
- 1945 – About ten days after World War II ended with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China killed Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by a portion of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
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