April 25:
1719 - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is published.
1792 - Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine.
1846 - Mexican-American War: Open conflict begins over border disputes of Texas' boundaries.
1859 - Ground is broken for the Suez Canal.
1862 - American Civil War: Forces under Union Admiral David Farragut capture the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Mark's Mills - Confederate forces seize a Union wagon supply train on its way to Camden, Arkansas forcing Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw his troops to Little Rock, Arkansas.
1898 - Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain; the U.S. Congress announces that a state of war has existed since April 21.
1916 - Easter Rebellion: The United Kingdom declares martial law in Ireland (lasts until April 29 - the end of the rebellion).
1945 - World War II: United States and Russian troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two.
1945 - The United Nations is organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations.
1959 - The first person now known to have AIDS enters a hospital.
1961 - Robert Noyce is granted a patent for an integrated circuit.
1974 - Carnation Revolution: A coup in Portugal restores democracy.
1975 - As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
1980 - A commando mission in Iran to rescue American embassy hostages is aborted after mechanical problems ground the rescue helicopters. Eight United States troops were killed in a mid-air collision during the failed operation.
1981 - More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan.
1982 - Israel completes its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula per the Camp David Accords.
1983 - Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit.
1990 - Space Shuttle program: STS-31 - Astronauts aboard the Discovery deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.
1993 - 300,000 homosexuals march on Washington, DC demanding freedom from discrimination.
Births
1599 - Oliver Cromwell, statesman (d. 1658) :/
1840 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer (d. 1893)
1874 - Guglielmo Marconi, inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1909 (d. 1937)
1900 - Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1945 (d. 1958)
1917 - Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer (d. 1996)
1940 - Al Pacino, actor
1945 - Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish singer, songwriter, ABBA member
1964 - Hank Azaria, actor, voice actor
1969 - Renée Zellweger, actress
Deaths
1995 - Ginger Rogers, actress, dancer (b. 1911)
2002 - Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, singer (b. 1971)