June 25 in History

North Korean People's Army forces crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, invading South Korea with 75,000 troops supported by Soviet-supplied T-34 tanks. The South Korean army, lacking tanks and heavy weapons, was quickly overwhelmed. Seoul fell on June 28. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing military force to repel the invasion, with the Soviet Union unable to veto because it was boycotting the Council over China's representation. General Douglas MacArthur's daring amphibious landing at Inchon on September 15 cut North Korean supply lines and recaptured Seoul. The advance to the Chinese border provoked China's intervention with 300,000 troops in November, pushing the front back to the 38th parallel. The war killed over three million people and ended with an armistice in 1953 that remains in effect; no peace treaty has ever been signed.

Bernon Mitchell and William Martin, two cryptanalysts at the National Security Agency, defected to the Soviet Union in September 1960 after leaving the US on June 25, 1960. They held a press conference in Moscow revealing that the NSA routinely intercepted the communications of over 40 nations, including US allies. The defection was one of the most damaging intelligence failures of the Cold War, compromising multiple cryptographic operations. Both men had passed NSA background checks despite having histories that should have raised red flags. The embarrassment prompted a major overhaul of the NSA's personnel security procedures. Mitchell and Martin spent the rest of their lives in the Soviet Union; Martin eventually became disillusioned with Soviet life and reportedly tried to return to the US, but was denied. He died in Russia in 1987.

He rehearsed "This Is It" for fifty concerts at the O2 Arena for six weeks before he died. Conrad Murray injected propofol into Michael Jackson's bloodstream as a sleep aid on the night of June 24, 2009. It wasn't a medical procedure; it was a nightly ritual. Jackson never woke up. He was fifty years old. "Thriller" still holds the record as the best-selling album in history, somewhere between 66 and 100 million copies depending on who's counting. He'd spent half his life being famous, half being famous and accused. The trial ended in acquittal. The music stays.

Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors annihilated five companies of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, killing Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and approximately 268 soldiers. The Native American force, estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 warriors led by Crazy Horse and inspired by Sitting Bull's vision of soldiers falling from the sky, outnumbered Custer's divided command. Custer had split his regiment into three groups and attacked without reconnaissance. The battle lasted roughly two hours. Every soldier in Custer's immediate command was killed. The victory was pyrrhic: the US Army responded by flooding the region with troops, and within two years most Lakota and Cheyenne bands had been forced onto reservations. The battlefield is now a National Monument visited by 400,000 people annually.

Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu accidentally unsealed Cave 17 at the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, China, in June 1900, discovering a library of approximately 50,000 ancient manuscripts, paintings, and printed documents that had been sealed since around 1002 AD. The collection included the Diamond Sutra, dated 868 AD, the world's oldest known complete printed book. Manuscripts were written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Hebrew, and other languages, documenting the cultural exchange along the Silk Road. Hungarian-British archaeologist Aurel Stein arrived in 1907 and purchased thousands of manuscripts for a pittance. Paul Pelliot of France followed in 1908. Chinese scholars were outraged by the removal of national treasures, and the episode became a symbol of Western cultural imperialism in China.

American and British warships bombarded German coastal fortifications at Cherbourg, France, on June 25, 1944, in support of the US VII Corps' assault on the heavily defended port. The naval force, including the battleship USS Texas, cruisers, and destroyers, exchanged fire with German shore batteries at ranges as close as 3,000 yards. USS Texas was hit by a shell from a 240mm battery that destroyed the bridge. The bombardment helped suppress the fortifications, allowing the infantry to capture the port on June 27. However, German forces had systematically demolished the harbor facilities, including sinking ships in the entrance channel, mining the basin, and destroying all cranes. It took three weeks of round-the-clock clearing before the first Liberty ship could dock, and the port did not reach full capacity until September.