July 14

• July 14, 1420
  Hussite forces under command of Jan Žižka defeat the forces of Emperor Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor at the Battle of Vítkov Hill, a part of the first anti-Hussite crusade, on the edge of the city of Prague
• July 14, 1520
  Hernando Cortes beats the Aztecs at the Battle of Otumba in Mexico
• July 14, 1683
  Turks lay siege to Vienna
• July 14, 1771
  Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan friar, founds the Mission San Antonio de Padua in California
• July 14, 1789
  Citizens of Paris, France, storm the Bastille fortress used as a prison to hold political prisoners, beginning the French Revolution and building foundation to modern political structure
• July 14, 1795
  The Marseillaise, a song written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle to mobilize all the citizens to fight against the foreign invasion, is officially adopted as the French national anthem
• April 30, 1803
  The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million and doubles the size of the country by Louisiana Purchase Treaty
• July 14, 1853
  Commodore Matthew Perry meets with the chief senior councillor in the Japanese government at ceremony at Kurihama, Japan, and presents a letter from former President Fillmore to Emperor Osahito requesting trade relations
• July 14, 1868
  Tape measure enclosed in a circular case is patented, by AJ Fellows, in Connecticut, United States
• July 14, 1877
  The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the world's first nationwide labor strike, begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia due to wage cuts and poor working conditions
• July 14, 1889
  A Congress of world Socialist parties selected May 1 as International Workers Day to support the United States labor struggle
• July 14, 1897
  Swede Saloman Andrée's and 2 accomplices, Knute Fraenkle and Nils Strindberg, in the Ornen balloon are forced down after 64 hours in the first expedition to fly by balloon across the North Pole
• July 14, 1914
  First patent for liquid-fueled rocket design is granted to American physicist Robert H. Goddard
• July 14, 1946
  American pediatrician Benjamin Spock publishes his book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, the best-selling book on infant and child care
• July 14, 1958
  King Faisal II, the last King of Iraq, is assassinated during the 14 July Revolution at Baghdad
• July 14, 1960
  Jane Goodall, an English primatologist and anthropologist, begins studying the Kasakela chimpanzee community in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania
• July 14, 2007
  Following a presidential decree, Russia withdraws from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
• July 14, 2008
  The Dark Knight, one of the best superhero films based on the DC Comics character Batman, is released in New York

March 25

• March 25, 1420
  Jan Zizka, Czech general and Hussite leader, defeats the Catholic forces at the Battle of Sudom in southern Bohemia, the first battle of the Hussite wars
• March 25, 1537
  The Fifth Lithuanian war with Russia ends with a peace treaty wherein Gomel is granted to Lithuania, while Muscovy kept Sebezh and Velizh
• March 25, 1655
  Christiaan Huygens, Dutch inventor and astronomer, uses a 50 power refracting telescope, designed himself, to study Rings of Saturn and discover Titan, the Saturn's largest satellite
• March 25, 1753
  Voltaire leaves the court of Frederik II of Prussia
• March 25, 1807
  William Wilberforce, an English politician and philanthropist, pilots a slave-trade abolition bill through the British House of Commons, making the slave trade illegal anywhere in the Empire
• March 25, 1821
  Greek War of Independence, which made Greece the first country to break away from the Ottoman Empire, begins raising of the banner with the cross in the Monastery of Agia Lavra
• March 25, 1843
  Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel underneath a navigable river, is opened 18 years after construction began
• March 25, 1895
  Italian troops invade Abyssinia, starting First Italo-Ethiopian War
• March 25, 1911
  The Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers and becoming the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city
• March 25, 1918
  Belarusian National Council, an assembly of different Belarusian political powers, issues a Third Constituent Charter declaring the independence of Belarus under German occupation
• March 25, 1949
  Hanns Albin Rauter, German SS-commandant in Netherlands, is executed at age 54 according with sentence of Dutch court
• March 25, 1957
  Treaty of Rome establishes European Economic Community, with West Germany, Italy, France, and the Benelux as the founding members, which would eventually lead to the European Union
• March 25, 1988
  The Candle Demonstration in Bratislava, Slovakia is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia
• March 25, 2008
  Iraqi forces begin the first major operation to be planned by the Iraqi Army since the invasion of 2003 and crack down on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi forces in Basra and Sadr City, which results in more than 1,000 casualties in six days of heavy fighting
• March 25, 2013
  The European Union agrees to a 10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus, equally split between the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the International Monetary Fund, ending Cypriot financial crisis