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FILE NO. 09.25 5 specimens · est. 1513-1962

What happened on September 25?

Real photographs, all filed under this date. Name each event before you read on.
Case Timeline 1513-1962 · 449 years
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What happened on September 25

All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1513 to 1962, with the story behind each photograph.

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  1. A boxer pitching forward onto the canvas while his opponent stands over him in a ring.
    Sports · 1962

    A heavyweight title changes hands in two minutes and six seconds

    Sonny Liston knocked out Floyd Patterson in the first round in Chicago on 25 September 1962 to take the world heavyweight title, in two minutes and six seconds. Patterson had brought a false beard and moustache with him in case he lost, and used them to slip out of the city.

  2. A monochrome plate of a conquistador in full plate armour standing knee deep in the sea, raising a sword in one hand and a heraldic banner in the other, with palms and onlookers on the shore behind.
    Exploration · 1513

    An explorer wades into an ocean no European had seen and claims all of it

    Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Panama and reached the Pacific on 25 September 1513, then waded in a few days later in armour to claim the entire ocean and every shore touching it for Spain. He was beheaded six years later on trumped-up charges of treason, on the orders of a rival who was also his father in law.

  3. The gutted hull of a large warship lying in harbour, its plating peeled open, with sailors standing on the wreck.
    Disaster · 1911

    A battleship blows up at anchor in its own harbour

    The French battleship Liberte blew up in Toulon harbour on 25 September 1911 when unstable propellant caught fire in a forward magazine. Around 250 men died, some of them on nearby ships hit by flying wreckage; a 37 tonne piece of armour plate landed on another battleship 200 metres away.

  4. A photograph looking up the vast reddish trunk of a giant tree towards its distant crown.
    Nature · 1890

    A grove of the largest living things on Earth is made a national park

    Sequoia became the second national park in the United States on 25 September 1890, created to stop the giant sequoias being logged. The wood turned out to be nearly worthless anyway: the trees shattered when they hit the ground, and much of a felled giant ended up as fence posts and matchsticks.

  5. A printed page in old type with a large heading, set in two columns of long dense paragraphs, browned with age.
    Media · 1690

    A newspaper prints its first issue and is shut down four days later

    Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick appeared in Boston on 25 September 1690, the first multi-page newspaper printed in the American colonies. The authorities suppressed it four days later for printing without permission, and for a paragraph about the French king. It never ran a second issue.