On this day in history - 25th October

On 25th October 1854, The Battle of Balaclava took place

 During the Crimean War, the Battle of Balaclava was part of the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55), an Allied attempt to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea. The engagement followed the earlier Allied victory in September at the Battle of the Alma, where the Russian General Menshikov had positioned his army in an attempt to stop the Allies progressing south towards their strategic goal. Alma was the first major encounter fought in the Crimean Peninsula since the Allied landings at Kalamita Bay on 14 September, and was a clear battlefield success; but a tardy pursuit by the Allies failed to gain a decisive victory, allowing the Russians to regroup, recover and prepare their defence. The image depicts the Thin Red Line.

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Births

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Births on this day

Deaths

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Deaths on this day

Events

285 (or 286) – Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers.
473 – Emperor Leo I acclaims his grandson Leo II as Caesar of the East Roman Empire.
1147 – Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1147 – Reconquista: After a siege of four months, crusader knights reconquer Lisbon.
1415 – Hundred Years' War: Henry V of England, with his lightly armoured infantry and archers, defeats the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt.
1616 – Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast.
1747 – War of the Austrian Succession: A British fleet under Admiral Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre.
1760 – King George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather George II.
1822 – Greek War of Independence: The First Siege of Missolonghi begins.
1854 – The Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War. It is soon memorialized in verse as The Charge of the Light Brigade.
1900 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
1917 – Old Style date of the October Revolution in Russia.
1944 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1944 – World War II: The final attempt of the Imperial Japanese Navy to win the war climaxes at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945 – Fifty years of Japanese administration of Taiwan formally ends when the Republic of China assumes control.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
1971 – The People's Republic of China replaces the Republic of China at the United Nations.
1983 – The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
2009 – The October 2009 Baghdad bombings kill 155 and wound at least 721.

Events on this day