On This Day 7.5.25

1429 The English siege of Orleans is broken by Joan of Arc, boosting French morale and paving the way for victory in the Hundred Years War.

1652 The ships Walvis and Oliphant, which had left the Netherlands with Jan van Riebeeck’s other three ships, arrive in Table Bay a day late, having had 130 burials at sea.

1867 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel – in whose memory the awards that bear his name would be given out each year – patents dynamite in England, the first of three patents he would receive for the explosive material.

1915 The passenger liner RMS Lusitania is torpedoed, turning public sentiment against Germany and bringing the US into World War I and speeding up its end.

1934 At a whopping 6.4kg, the world’s largest pearl is found at Palawan, in the Philippines.

1942 The Battle of Coral Sea ends, stopping Japanese expansion. It is Japan’s first defeat of World War II and the battle marked the first time that two forces fought only using aircraft without the ships ever sighting each other.

1952 The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer.

1986 Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to conquer the Seven Summits (the highest peak on each continent).

1999 A Nato plane accidentally bombs China’s Belgrade embassy, killing three people.

2004 American businessman Nick Berg is beheaded by Islamic militants. The decapitation is filmed and released on the Internet.

2015 Underwater explorers discover a silver ingot from pirate Captain William Kidd’s fabled treasure near Madagascar.

2021 Former police officer and suspected serial killer Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez is arrested after a grave holding 15-40 bodies is found at his house in Chalchuapa, El Salvador.

2022 Afghan women are issued a decree to cover their faces in public (hijab reaching head to toe) by Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or her male guardian faces criminal punishment.

2023 Syria is readmitted to the influential Arab League, more than 10 years after being thrown out for repressing pro-democracy protesters.