On Aug. 25, 1718, hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act establishing the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior.
In 1928, an expedition led by Richard E. Byrd set sail from Hoboken, N.J., on its journey to Antartica.
In 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
In 1945, John Birch, an American missionary to China before the war and a captain in the Army during the war, is killed by Chinese communists days after the surrender of Japan, for no apparent reason.
In 1962, Little Eva went to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘The Loco-motion’. The Carole King and Gerry Goffin song was offered to Dee Dee Sharp (Mashed Potatoes), who turned it down. The writers had their babysitter record it who took it to No.1.
In 1975, Bruce Springsteen released his third studio album Born to Run. The album peaked at No.3 on the Billboard chart eventually selling six million copies in the United States and has since been considered by critics to be one of the greatest albums in popular music. Two singles were released from the album: ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’; the first helped Springsteen to reach mainstream popularity.
In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.
In 2009, Edward “Ted” Kennedy, the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1962 to 2009, dies of brain cancer at age 77 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
In 2012, Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, died in Cincinnati, Ohio, age 82.