| 25 July 1261 | Nicaean Empire, Latin Empire of Constantinople [political events] | The Nicaean emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus recovers the city of Constantinople and is crowned there, deposing his ward and fellow emperor, John IV Lascaris. This marks the end of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. |
| 25 July 1536 | Holy Roman Empire, France [Habsburg–Valois Wars (1494–1559)] | The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V leads an imperial invasion of Provence, countering the French conquest of Piedmont. The French under Anne de Montmorency, 1st Duc, retreat but stall Charles's advance, devastating the land by ‘scorched earth’ tactics. Charles besieges the Provençal port of Marseille. |
| 25 July 1554 | England, Spain, Naples, Italy [political events] | Queen Mary I of England marries Philip of Spain (the future king Philip II) in Winchester, England. Philip is granted the kingdom of Naples by his father the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. |
| 25 July 1564 | Holy Roman Empire [political events] | The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I dies; his eldest son, the Protestant sympathizer Maximilian II, already king of Bohemia and Hungary, succeeds as Holy Roman Emperor and archduke of Austria. However, Ferdinand's will grants his younger sons, the archdukes Ferdinand and Charles, the Swabian territories, the Vorarlberg, and Tirol, and the provinces of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola respectively. |
| 25 July 1593 | France [political events] | Declaring ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ (‘Paris is well worth a Mass’), King Henry IV of France abjures Calvinism to become a Roman Catholic, hearing Mass at St Denis. A truce with the Catholic League follows in five days, and Henry enters Paris. |
| 25 July 1712 | Swiss Confederation [wars] | The Battle of Villmergen (the ‘Second Villmergen War’) between the Catholic and Protestant cantons, largely over the disproportionate Catholic supremacy in the diet of the Swiss Confederation, is won by the Protestant cantons, led by the prosperous industrial centres of Bern and Zürich. This firmly establishes their dominance. |
| 25 July 1775 | Pacific [exploration] | English explorer James Cook returns to England after a second voyage in the South Seas, having completed the first successful west–east circumnavigation of the world. |
| 25 July 1814 | UK [railways] | English engineer George Stephenson constructs his first steam locomotive, called Bulcher. It is the first engine to be built with flanged wheels running on edge rails, as all later locomotives will do. |
| 25 July 1814 | Germany [physics] | German physicist Joseph von Fraunhöfer plots more than 500 absorption lines (Fraunhöfer lines) and discovers that the relative positions of the lines are constant for each element. His work forms the basis of modern spectroscopy. |
| 25 July 1830 | France [law and government] | King Charles X of France issues the three ordinances of St-Cloud for controlling the press, dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, and having antigovernment voters removed from the electoral lists following the victory of the Liberal opposition in the elections. |
| 25 July 1834 | England [births and deaths] | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Romantic poet, literary critic, and philosopher, dies in Highgate, London, England (61). |
| 25 July 1907 | Korea, Japan [administration] | Japan declares in a treaty that Korea is its protectorate. Korea also agrees a convention giving Japan control over its government through Japanese vice ministers in its major departments. Japan has controlled Korea's foreign policy since 1905. |
| 25 July 1909 | France, United Kingdom [aircraft] | French aviator Louis Blériot crosses the English Channel by monoplane in 37 minutes from Le Boraques, France, to Dover, England. |
| 25 July 1934 | Austria [revolution] | Engelbert Dollfuss, leader of the Fatherland Front, chancellor, and effective fascist dictator of Austria, is assassinated by the Nazis in an attempted coup. |
| 25 July 1965 | USA [popular music] | US folksinger Bob Dylan plays an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, supported by the Butterfield Blues Band; his fans jeer, but he shows how folk music could merge with rock. |
| 25 July 1978 | England [surgery] | Louise Brown is born at Oldham Hospital, London, England; she is the first ‘test tube’ baby. Having been unable to remove a blockage from her mother's Fallopian tube, gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards removed an egg from her ovary, fertilized it with her husband's sperm, and re-implanted it in her uterus. |
| 25 July 1994 | Jordan, Israel, USA [treaties] | King Hussein of Jordan and Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, sign a joint declaration in Washington, DC, formally ending conflict between them (on 26 October a peace treaty is signed in a desert ceremony on the border between Jordan and Israel). |
| 25 July 2000 | France [transport disasters] | An Air France Concorde jet, chartered to a German tour company, crashes soon after take-off from Paris, France, killing all 109 passengers and crew, and four people on the ground. |
