12 History Lessons + 7 Births & 7 Deaths for September 20, 2025
Today’s History:
- 1519 – Ferdinand Magellan departs Sanlúcar de Barrameda, beginning the first circumnavigation of the globe.
- 1792 – Battle of Valmy: French revolutionary forces halt a Prussian advance, bolstering the new Republic.
- 1854 – Battle of the Alma: Allies win the first major engagement of the Crimean War.
- 1870 – Italian troops breach the Porta Pia and capture Rome, completing Italian unification.
- 1905 – (Re)opening day at the newly rebuilt Plaça de toros de Las Arenas in Barcelona after modernization.
- 1946 – The first Cannes Film Festival opens on the French Riviera.
- 1958 – Martin Luther King Jr. is stabbed in a Harlem department store; he survives emergency surgery.
- 1973 – “Battle of the Sexes”: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in straight sets at the Houston Astrodome.
- 1977 – Vietnam and Djibouti are admitted as member states of the United Nations.
- 2001 – President George W. Bush addresses a joint session of Congress following the 9/11 attacks.
- 2011 – “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” formally ends, allowing gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans to serve openly in the U.S. military.
- 2017 – Hurricane Maria makes catastrophic landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm; widespread devastation follows.
- 2019 – Global youth-led climate strikes draw millions to the streets worldwide.
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1934 – Sophia Loren, Oscar-winning actor (91)
- 1948 – George R. R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire (77)
- 1956 – Gary Cole, film & TV actor (Office Space; Veep) (69)
- 1966 – Nuno Bettencourt, guitarist-songwriter (Extreme) (59)
- 1967 – Kristen Johnston, Emmy-winning actor (3rd Rock from the Sun) (58)
- 1975 – Juan Pablo Montoya, Indy 500 & F1 driver (50)
- 1976 – Jon Bernthal, actor (The Punisher; Fury) (49)
Today’s Deaths:
- 1933 – Annie Besant, theosophist and women’s rights advocate (85)
- 1947 – Fiorello H. LaGuardia, three-term New York City mayor (64)
- 1957 – Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer (Finlandia) (91)
- 1973 – Jim Croce, singer-songwriter (“Time in a Bottle”) (30)
- 1996 – Paul Erdős, prolific Hungarian mathematician (83)
- 2005 – Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter (96)
- 2016 – Curtis Hanson, Oscar-winning filmmaker (L.A. Confidential) (71)
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