Today in 1956 near Nantucket Island, Italian Ocean liner Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51 people; and in 1961 President Kennedy says that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.

July 25 is the 206th day of the year (207th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 159 days remaining until the end of the year.

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:

EVENTS

285 – Diocletian appoints Maximian as his Roman co-ruler.

306 – Constantine I is elected Emperor by his troops.

315 – The Arch of Constantine is completed near the Colosseum in Rome.

864 – The Edict of Pistres of Charles the Bald orders defensive measures against the Vikings

1261 – The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Alexios Strategopoulos, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire.

1278 – The Battle of Algeciras results in a victory for the Emirate of Granada.

1467 – Battle of Molinella: First battle in Italy in which guns are used extensively.

1536 – Sebastian de Belalcazar founds the city of Santiago de Cali in Colombia in his search for El Dorado.

1538 – The city of Guayaquil in present-day Ecuador is founded.

1547 – King Henry II of France is crowned.

1554 – Mary I of England marries Philip II of Spain.

1567 – Caracas is founded.

1593 – Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.

1603 – James VI of Scotland is crowned joint king of Scotland and England.

1668 – The magnitude 8.5 Shandong earthquake causes 43,000 to 50,000 deaths in Shandong during the Qing Dynasty, making it the largest historical earthquake in Eastern China.

1797 – Horatio Nelson loses over 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife.

1814 – War of 1812: Battle of Lundy's Lane.

1824 – Costa Rica annexes Guanacaste from Nicaragua.

1868 – Wyoming becomes a United States Territory.

1869 – The daimyo begin returning their land holdings to the Emperor of Japan as part of the Meiji Restoration.

1893 – The Corinth Canal in Greece is used for the first time.

1898 – Spanish-American War: The US invades Puerto Rico.

1909 – Louis Blériot flies across the English Channel.

1917 – Robert Borden introduces the first income tax in Canada.

1920 – France captures Damascus.

1925 – The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.

1934 – The Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.

1935 – A flooding disaster in China kills around 200,000 people.

1940 – World War II: General Henri Guisan orders the Swiss army to resist German invasion and makes surrender illegal.

1942 – World War II: The Norwegian Manifesto calls for non-violent resistance against the Nazis.

1943 – Benito Mussolini is removed from office by his own Italian Grand Council. He is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.

1944 – World War II: Operation Spring - Canada's military suffers its deadliest day of the war, as 500 soldiers are killed, with around 1,000 injured.

1951 – The legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is protected under Turkish law.

1952 – Puerto Rico introduces a constitution.

1956 – Near Nantucket Island, Italian Ocean liner Andrea Doria collides with the MS Stockholm in heavy fog and sinks the next day, killing 51 people.

1957 – Tunisia becomes a Republic, with Habib Bourguiba as President.

1961 – John F. Kennedy says that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO.

1965 – Bob Dylan goes electric as he plugs in at the Newport Folk Festival.

1969 – An earthquake in China kills around 3,000 people.

1973 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe is launched.

1976 – The Viking 1 space probe takes the famous "Face on Mars" photograph.

1978 – Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, is born in Oldham, England.

1984 – Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to go on a space walk.

1992 – The 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona begin.

1993 – Saint James Church massacre in Kenilworth, Cape Town.

1994 – Israel and Jordan end their state of war, which had existed since 1948.

1995 – A gas bottle explodes at Saint Michel station of Line B on Paris' regional rail network, killing 8 people.

1996 – In a military coup in Burundi, Pierre Buyoya deposes Sylvestre Ntibantunganya.

1997 – K. R. Narayanan becomes President of India.

1999 – Lance Armstrong wins the first the seven consecutive Tour de France titles that have been struck from the record in 2012 following doping revelations.

2000 – Air France Flight 4590, a concorde supersonic jet, crashes shortly after take-off near Paris, killing all 109 people on board, and 4 on the ground.

2002 – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam becomes President of India.

2007 – Pratibha Patil becomes the first female President of India.

2010 – WikiLeaks releases 90,000 internal reports on the US involvement in the War in Afghanistan.

2012 – Pranab Mukherjee becomes President of India.

2013 – Tunisian opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi is shot dead, leading to many protests in the country.

2017 – Ram Nath Kovind becomes President of India.

2018 – A bomb attack occurs in the city of Quetta, Pakistan, killing 31 people, on the country's election day. Former cricketer Imran Khan's party declares victory in the vote.

2018 – The discovery of a lake of liquid water under Mars' southern polar ice cap is announced.

2019 – Beji Cad Essebsi, President of Tunisia, dies aged 92 while still in office; Mohamed Ennaceur becomes Interim President until elections can be held.

2019 – Several Western European countries and cities record their hottest-ever temperatures.

2019 – Over 150 people die when their boat sinks off Libya.