Calendar for August 25th, 2012

Born 1530: Ivan IV of Russia ("Ivan the Terrible")

1682: 3 women die for witchcraft near Exeter, England

1718: New Orleans, Louisiana, founded

1835: Hoax about life on the Moon printed in The New York Sun

Born 1836: Bret Harte (author)

1875: British swimmer Matthew Webb was the first documented person to swim across the English Channel

1905: President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to descend in a submarine

Born 1913: Walt Kelly (Pogo cartoonist)

1916: National Park Service established

Born 1917: Mel Ferrer (actor)

Born 1918: Leonard Bernstein (composer)

Born 1927: Althea Gibson (first African American female tennis player to compete in U.S. championships in 1950 and in Wimbeldon a year later)

Born 1930: Sean Connery (actor)

Born 1933: Tom Skerritt (actor)

1940: First parachute wedding took place, in New York City

1944: Paris is liberated. German occupying-officer General Deitrick von Choltitz surrendered to French Major General Jacques Le Clerc

1945: Baptist missionary and U.S. Army intelligence officer John Birch was executed as a spy by Chinese Communists

Born 1947: Anne Archer (actress)

Born 1954: Elvis Costello (musician)

Born 1958: Tim Burton (film director, producer, screenwriter)

Born 1968: Rachael Ray (chef)

1981: Closest approach to Saturn by Voyager 2

Died 1985: Samatha Smith (an American schoolgirl who received world-wide attention for writing to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov)

Died 2000: Carl Barks (illustrator of Donald Duck)

2004: Two passenger jets that flew out of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport within 40 minutes of each other crashed within three or four minutes of each other, killing nearly 100 people

Died 2009: Edward Moore Kennedy (politician)

2011: An early morning 4.5-magnitude aftershock centered 31 miles east of Charlottesville, struck 2 days after an initial 5.8-magnitude quake in Virginia. The aftershock was felt as far away as Pennsylvania and New York.

Died 2012: Neil Armstrong (astronaut; first to set foot on the Moon)