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October 25 in History

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The Monkey Bite That Broke an Empire

October 25, 1920

The Monkey Bite That Broke an Empire

When a twenty-seven-year-old king tried to separate his pet dog from an angry monkey in a palace vineyard, nobody imagined the incident would topple a government. Three weeks later, his agonizing death triggered a catastrophic shift in world diplomacy that reshaped the Near East.

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Also on this day

More that happened on October 25

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  1. 1147Portuguese troops led by King Afonso I successfully captured the strategic city of Lisbon from Moorish forces after a prolonged siege.
  2. 1415King Henry V led an outnumbered English army to a decisive victory over French forces at the Battle of Agincourt.
  3. 1555Holy Roman Emperor Charles V formally abdicated his sovereignty over the Low Countries in Brussels, transferring control to his son Philip.
  4. 1671Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered Iapetus, the third-largest moon orbiting the planet Saturn, using a refracting telescope.
  5. 1854A British cavalry unit suffered disastrous casualties against Russian artillery during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.
  6. 1929Former Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall became the first United States cabinet official convicted of a felony for accepting bribes.
  7. 1944Allied naval forces decisively defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval clash in history.
  8. 1951Winston Churchill returned to power as British prime minister after the Conservative Party defeated Clement Attlee's Labour government in general elections.
  9. 1962United States Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented photographic evidence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba to the United Nations Security Council.
  10. 1971The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize the People's Republic of China as China's sole representative, expelling Taiwan.
  11. 1983United States military forces invaded the Caribbean island nation of Grenada following a violent Marxist coup that ousted its government.
  12. 2001Microsoft officially launched Windows XP, introducing a major redesign and updated operating system architecture to personal computer consumers worldwide.

Chosen from the October 25 pages of HISTORY, HistoryNet and OnThisDay.com, retold in our own words.