What happened on September 25
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1513 to 1962, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.