This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones
Aug. 25-31, 2025
August 25
1829 – President Jackson makes an offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refuses. President John Q. Adams offered to buy Mexico for $1 million two years earlier. His offer was also rejected. President Polk annexed Texas in 1845.
1916 – The National Park Service is established as part of the Department of the Interior during the Woodrow Wilson administration. Yellowstone (in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho) was named the first public park in 1872 during the Ulysses S. Grant administration.
1920 – Ethelda Bleibtrey becomes the first U.S. woman to win a medal in the Olympics (swimming). She won three gold medals and set three world records in Olympic swimming competitions in Belgium. Bleibtrey started swimming as therapy to overcome the effects of polio. Bleibtrey died in 1978 at the age of 76.
1968 – Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the U.S. men’s singles tennis championship. Ashe contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion and died in 1993 at age 49. Watch a report about his championship win and career.
1989 – After a 12-year, 4-billion-mile journey, NASA’s Voyager 2 (launched in 1977) flies over the cloud tops of the planet Neptune and its moon Triton, sending back photographs. It is 12 billion miles from Earth traveling at over 34,000 mph.
2012 – NASA’s Voyager 1, launched in 1977, becomes the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space. Voyager 1 is now 15 billion miles from Earth, traveling at over 38,000 mph, and still sending back information. It is headed toward a star called AC+79 3888, which is 17.6 light years from Earth. Both Voyager 1 and 2 carry a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images from Earth.
August 26
1839 – The slave ship Amistad is captured off Long Island, New York, after a mutiny. The slaves were tried and acquitted because it was deemed they were not property but had been kidnapped. Donations helped repatriate the freed slaved to Sierra Leone.
1895 – George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla build America’s first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. Electric Central at Niagara Falls gave off steam using hydroelectricity for the first time.
1957 – The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolls of the assembly line. The car was produced for only 3 years. The Edsel was named after Henry Ford’s son. Watch a commercial for the 1958 Edsel.
1987 – The Fuller Brush Company announces plans to open two retail stores in Dallas, Texas. The company was started by Arthur C. Fuller in 1906 and sold its products door to door for 81 years. The company is still in business.
2015 – TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are fatally shot on live TV by an ex-colleague in Moneta, Virginia. The gunman shot himself during a car chase by police and died in the hospital.
August 27
1667 – The earliest recorded hurricane in the U.S. strikes Jamestown, Virginia.
1894 – Congress passes the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which includes a graduated income tax. The Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in 1895. The 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, allowing Congress to levy personal income taxes.
1928 – The U.S. is one of 15 countries to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlaws war. Forty-seven other countries later signed the Pact, named for Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. The Senate ratified it 85-1. The signatories promised not to use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts.” Although often violated, the Pact remains in effect.
1976 – Transsexual Renee Richards, born Richard Raskind, is barred from competing in U.S. Tennis Open. The New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor and Richards played in the 1977 U.S. Open. She and her tennis partner lost the doubles match to Martina Navratilova and her partner. Richards is now 91 years old.
1996 – California Governor Pete Wilson signs an order that would halt illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other state services. During her 1994 Senate campaign, incumbent Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) ran on tough policies against illegal immigration.
2001 – Work begins on the World War II memorial on the U.S. capital’s historic National Mall, located between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial opened in April 2004.
2012 – The first interplanetary human voice recording is broadcast from the Mars Rover Curiosity. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made the 169-word recording. Listen to it.
August 28
1830 – The first steam locomotive train built in the U.S., “Tom Thumb,” runs from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mill, Maryland, carrying the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad directors. It hauled passengers until 1831 but was never put into regular service. “Tom Thumb” was salvaged for parts in 1834.
1907 – The United Parcel Service (UPS) is founded by teenagers James E. Casey and Claude Ryan in Seattle, Washington, as the American Messenger Company with a $100 investment. The company started making deliveries in a Model T Ford in 1913. UPS, now headquartered near Atlanta, Georgia, is the largest package delivery company in the world, delivering about 22.3 million packages daily.
1917 – Ten suffragists are arrested as they picket in front of the White House. They had been picketing every day since January. Ninety-seven of the suffragettes who were arrested between June and November 1907 spent time in either a workhouse or jail. Many of the women went a hunger strike and were force fed through a Nasogastric tube (a tube inserted through the nose into the stomach). It was another three years before the 19th Amendment was passed granting women the right to vote. The 15th Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote, was passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870.
1957 – Democrat Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina begins a 24-hour 18-minute filibuster against the Civil Rights Bill. He still holds the record for the longest filibuster in Congress. The bill was a watered-down version of the original House bill after Senate Majority Leader (and future president Lyndon Johnson) led the fight against the protection provisions in the bill. The bill passed less than 2 hours after Thurmond ends his filibuster. Every Republican voted for the bill, while nearly 40 percent of Democrats voted against it. Thurmond died in 2003 at age 100.
1963 – Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Listen to the entire speech.
1981 – The National Centers for Disease Control announces a high incidence of Pneumocystis and Kaposi’s sarcoma in gay men. Both diseases were later linked to HIV and AIDS.
2014 – Google announces Project Wing, aimed at delivering products across a city using unmanned flying vehicles (drones). Wing has delivered over 400,000 packages to the U.S., Europe, and Australia since 2021. Watch the Project Wing test flight video.
August 29
1758 – The New Jersey Legislature forms the first Indian reservation in the U.S. for the Lenni-Lenape Indians in Burlington County.
1862 – The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing begins operation, with Salmon P. Chase as the Treasury Secretary, by printing $1 and $2 bills. Salmon P. Chase appears on the $10,000 bill. He is one of only three men who appear on currency who were not presidents. Benjamin Franklin is on the $100 bill and Alexander Hamilton is on the $10 bill.
1904 – The first Olympics ever held in the U.S. opens in St. Louis, Missouri, with 651 athletes (645 men and 6 women) representing 12 participating countries.
1909 – American aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss wins the world’s first air race in his airplane “The June Bug.” The race was held in Rheims, France, over a 20-kilometer course. Curtiss flew the course at 46.5 miles per hour in less than 16 minutes. Curtiss died in 1930 at age 52 from complications following an appendectomy.
1958 – The Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1966 – The Beatles perform their last public concert. They performed at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California. Their first public concert in the U.S. was February 1964 in Washington, DC.
2005 – Hurricane Katrina makes landfall as a Category 3 hurricane devastating much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida Panhandle, killing 1,833 people and causing over $115 billion in damage. Watch a brief day-by-day report. Hurricane Katrina
2007 – An Air Force nuclear weapons incident takes place at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base when nuclear warheads are not removed before the missiles were transported.
August 30
1884 – Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey (born John Edward Kelly) wins the middleweight boxing title in the first fight with boxing gloves. Over his 12-year professional career, Dempsey was defeated only three times in 68 bouts. He died of TB in 1895 at the age of 32.
1963 – A hotline communications link begins between the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. and the Kremlin in Moscow.
1983 – The First Miss Teen USA pageant is held. It is an annual event for girls aged 14-19 who are U.S. citizens. They cannot be married, pregnant, or have children. Watch the first crowning ceremony.
1997 – In the first Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Championship game the Houston Comets beat the New York Liberty. There are currently 12 teams, six in the Eastern Conference and six in the Western.
2015 – Rap artist Kanye West announces at the MTV Video Music Awards that he will run for President in 2020. He tweeted in July that he may postpone his 2024 presidential bid, but later deleted it. West was married to Kim Kardashian for seven years before they divorced in 2021. The have four children.
August 31
1910 – President Theodore Roosevelt makes a speech in Kansas advocating a “square deal” in which property shall be “the servant and not the master of the commonwealth.”
1920 – John Lloyd Wright (1892-1972) is issued a patent for “Toy-Cabin Construction,” which are better known as Lincoln Logs. His father was renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Watch the history of Lincoln Logs and John Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).
1955 – William Cobb of General Motors demonstrates the first sun-powered automobile, the 15-inch-long “Sun Mobile,” at the GM Powerama in Chicago, Illinois.
1964 – California officially becomes (and remains) the most populous state in America. California has a current population of about 39 million people, while Wyoming has the least with less than 600,000 people.
1985 – The California “Night Stalker” is arrested in Los Angeles. Richard Ramirez was accused of murdering at least 15 people. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. Ramirez was sentenced to death but died of cancer in 2013 while awaiting execution.
1990 – The Seattle Mariners become the first baseball team to have father-son teammates when Ken Griffey, Sr. (age 40) and son Ken Griffey, Jr. (age 20) play a game together.
2012 – Apple Computers loses its patent dispute with Samsung of Tokyo, Japan. It was one of many patent infringement rulings from cases filed in courts around the world starting in 2011. It wasn’t until the middle of 2018 that the patent dispute trials were resolved in favor of Apple.
2015 – President Obama officially renames Alaska’s Mt. McKinley as Denali, its native-American name. In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order returning the name to Mt. McKinley.
Image from: latimes.com
