1 of 7 | Service members pick through the rubble following the bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 23, 1983. File Photo courtesy of the U.S. Marines
Aug. 25 (UPI) — On this date in history:
In 1609, Galileo Galilei exhibited his first telescope in Venice.
In 1718, the city of New Orleans was founded.
In 1944, allied forces and the French resistance freed the city of Paris from German occupation during World War II. United Press reporter James McGlincy was the first foreign correspondent in the capital amid the fighting. He reported the Parisians welcomed the Allies with kisses: “Lord, how they kissed us!“
In 1967, a sniper assassinated American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in Arlington, Va.
In 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered the deployment of the Marines to Beirut amid the Lebanese Civil War. The troops were part of a multinational force that ultimately stayed in Lebanon until March 1984. More than 260 U.S. service members died during the deployment, most during a barracks bombing in 1983.
In 1985, Samantha Smith, 13, was killed with her father and six other people in a plane crash in Maine. Samantha’s 1983 letter to Soviet President Yuri Andropov about her fear of nuclear war earned her a visit to the Soviet Union.
Photo courtesy RIA Novosti archive
In 1989, Voyager 2, after a 4 billion-mile journey, made its closest pass over Neptune, sending back images of southern lights and its moon, Triton, to Earth.
In 2009, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a liberal fixture in the Senate for 46 years, died of brain cancer at the age of 77.
File Photo by CJ Gunther/UPI
In 2012, former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died in Cincinnati. He was 82.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on San Jose Island, Texas, as a Category 4 storm. Harvey killed more than 100 people and caused $125 billion in damage.
In 2020, the Africa Regional Certification Commission declared Africa free of wild polio after four years without a case. It returned less than two years later.
File Photo by Marshall Wolfe/EPA