October 25 in History

Hartog was searching for spices when storms blew his ship, the Eendracht, off course. He landed on an island off Western Australia, the second European to touch the continent after Willem Janszoon in 1606. Hartog nailed a pewter plate to a post describing his arrival, then sailed away. Nobody came back for 80 years. A French expedition found the plate in 1697. It's now in a museum in Amsterdam. The island still bears his name.

Admiral Edward Hawke's British squadron intercepted and devastated a French convoy escort off Cape Finisterre, capturing six warships and scattering the rest. The victory crippled French naval capacity in the Atlantic and confirmed Britain's dominance of the sea lanes that connected European powers to their colonial empires.

USS United States captured HMS Macedonian after a 90-minute battle in the Atlantic. Captain Stephen Decatur brought the British frigate back to America as a prize—the first time a British warship was ever brought into an American port. The Macedonian had 104 casualties. The United States had 12. Congress gave Decatur $200,000 in prize money. They commissioned the Macedonian into the U.S. Navy.

The Boer republics—Transvaal and Orange Free State—had been fighting Britain for eight months. Britain had 400,000 troops in South Africa. The Boers had 88,000. Britain annexed Transvaal, declared it a crown colony, and assumed the war was over. It wasn't. Boer commandos fought a guerrilla campaign for two more years. Britain responded by inventing concentration camps, imprisoning 150,000 Boer civilians. 26,000 died, most of them children.

The Chinese Assassination Corps kills Qing general Fengshan in Guangzhou, shattering imperial authority and accelerating the collapse of the Qing dynasty. This bold strike proves radical momentum has reached southern China's heart, compelling local officials to abandon their posts and paving the way for the republic's rapid expansion across the region.

Terence MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison after 74 days without food. He was Lord Mayor of Cork and an IRA commander. British forces had arrested him for possessing seditious documents. He refused to recognize the court. His hunger strike became international news. He'd said "it is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer." His funeral in Cork drew 30,000 people.

The letter, supposedly from Soviet official Grigory Zinoviev, urged British communists to prepare for revolution. The Daily Mail published it four days before the election. Labour's lead evaporated. The Conservatives won in a landslide. The letter was fake, probably forged by Russian émigrés and British intelligence. The Mail knew it was questionable but published anyway. Labour wouldn't return to power for five years. The forgery wasn't definitively proven until 1999.

Archbishop Beckman told 3,000 Catholic students that swing music was 'communistic' and designed to undermine morality. He said it was part of a Jewish conspiracy. He specifically condemned Benny Goodman. Goodman, who was Jewish, responded by playing a concert in Iowa and dedicating a song to the Archbishop. Swing kept spreading. By 1940, it was the most popular music in America. Beckman never mentioned it again.