Today is Friday, January 25, the 25th day of 2008. There are 341 days left in the year.
1327 _ King Edward III accedes to British throne
1494 _ Alfonso II replaces his father as king of Naples
1579 _ The Treaty of Utrecht signed, marks beginning of Dutch Republic
1721 _ Czar Peter the Great ends Russian-orthodox patriarchy
1802 _ Napoleon elected president of the Italian (Cisalpine) Republic
1910 _ Children initiate idea of planting trees in Jerusalem
1915 _ Transcontinental telephone service inaugurated (New York to San Francisco)
1916 _ Montenegro surrenders to Austria-Hungary
1918 _ Russia declared a republic of Soviets
1945 _ Japanese occupiers of Batavia arrest Indo-European youths
1951 _ U.N. forces begin counteroffensive in Korea
1955 _ Russia ends state of war with Germany
1955 _ Columbia University scientists develop an atomic clock accurate to within one second in 300 years
1959 _ Pope John XXIII proclaims the second Vatican council
1969 _ U.S.-North Vietnamese peace talks begin in Paris
1980 _ The Dutch government demands boycott of Olympics
1981 _ 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived back in the U.S.
1981 _ Mao's widow Jiang Qing sentenced to death
1991 _ Manuel Noriega is given access to assets frozen by the U.S. government
1993 _ Puerto Rico adds English as its second official language