Today in History in 1950 U.S. President Harry Truman gets the army to take over the railways to stop a strike.

Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

August 25 is the 237th day of the year (238th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 128 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

450 – Pulcheria becomes Empress of the Byzantine Empire after her brother Theodosius II is killed during a hunting accident.

1248 – The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, Archbishop of Utrecht.

1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and second most senior, is founded.

1580 – Battle of Alcantara: Spain defeats Portugal.

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1718 – New Orleans is founded by French settlers.

1758 – Seven Years' War: Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Zorndorf.

1768 – James Cook begins his first voyage.

1778 – Triglav in the Julian Alps, which is Slovenia's highest peak, is successfully climbed for the first time, by Lovrenc Willomitzer.

1810 – Briton Paul Durand receives a patent for the tin can.

1825 – Uruguay declares independence from Brazil.

1830 – The Belgian Revolution begins.

1835 – The New York Sun carries out the Great Moon Hoax.

1844 – Australia's first synagogue is started in Melbourne.

1856 – The Teatro Solis theatre opens in Montevideo, Uruguay.

1861 – The Clayton Tunnel train crash in the UK kills 23 people and injures 176.

1875 – Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to successfully swim across the English Channel, from Dover, England, UK to Calais, France.

1894 – Kitasato Shibasaburo discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague.

1898 – 700 Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mon in Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

1912 – The Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) is founded.

1914 – World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army.

1916 – The United States National Park Service is created.

1920 – Polish-Soviet War: The Battle of Warsaw, which began on August 13, ends as the Red Army is defeated.

1927 – Japanese destroyer Warabi sinks after a collision with the light cruiser Jintsu, killing 102 people.

1933 – The Diexi earthquake strikes Mao County, Sichuan, China, killing 9,000 people.

1938 – Inauguration of the Obelisk of Montevideo on Uruguayan Independence Day.

1939 – The United Kingdom and Poland form a military alliance in which the United Kingdom promises to defend Poland in the case of invasion by a foreign power. Nazi Germany invades Poland just a week later, after which the United Kingdom and France both declare war on Germany on September 3.

1941 – World War II: British and Soviet troops enter Iran.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Milne Bay.

1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.

1945 – Ten days after the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China kill American Baptist missionary John Birch. Some people on the American political right regard this as the start of the Cold War.

1945 – Emperor Bao Dai of Vietnam resigns, leaving Ho Chi Minh in power.

1950 – US President Harry Truman gets the army to take over the railways to stop a strike.

1956 – Off Stockholm, Sweden, the wreck of the ship Vasa is found. It had sunk at the start of its first voyage in 1628.

1960 – The 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, begin.

1961 – President of Brazil Janio Quadros resigns after just seven months in power.

1975 – Australian band, the Little River Band puts out its first recording, Curiosity Killed the Cat.

1980 – Zimbabwe joins the UN.

1981 – Voyager 2 approaches Saturn.

1988 – Most of the old town of Lisbon, Portugal, is destroyed by fire.

1989 – Mayumi Moriyama becomes Japan's first female cabinet secretary.

1989 – Voyager 2 approaches Neptune.

1991 – Belarus declares independence from the Soviet Union.

1991 – Croatian War of Independence: The Battle of Vukovar begins, as an 87-day siege in the city of Vukovar begins, by the Yugoslav People's Army, supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what would become Linux.

1991 – First flight of an Airbus A340.

1992 – Siege of Sarajevo: The National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina is deliberately set on fire, with thousands of irreplaceable works being destroyed.

1995 – First flight of an Airbus A319.

1997 – Former leader of East Germany Egon Krenz is convicted of ordering a shoot-to-kill policy at the Berlin Wall.

2001 – Marriage of Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway and Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway.

2002 – For the first time, in election for Chancellor of Germany, the main candidates face each other in a television debate. The election is mainly between then-incumbent Gerhard Schröder and his challenger Edmund Stoiber.

2003 – The Delta II rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending the Spitzer space telescope into space.

2006 – Because of difficult situation in East Timor, the UN sends an integrated mission there.

2012 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft becomes the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. This occurs on the same day as the death of astronaut Neil Armstrong.

2013 – At least 42 people are killed in bomb attacks in Iraq. On the same day, neighboring Syria announces it will allow UN weapons inspectors into the country, during its civil war.

2017 – Riots in Northern India result in at least 36 deaths, after the rape conviction of religious leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

2017 – Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas, causing several days of heavy rain and flooding. The city of Houston is among the places heavily flooded.

2018 – Pope Francis visits the Republic of Ireland.