August 25 is the 237th day of the year  (238th in leap years). There are 126 days remaining until the end of the year. (Illustration: A lithograph of life on the Moon, published by the New York Sun as part of the Great Moon Hoax, which began August 25, 1835.)

On this day in history —

• Galileo demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers (1609)
• The Great Moon Hoax: The New York Sun prints the first of six articles about the supposed discovery of life on the Moon by Sir John Herschel (1835)
• Captain Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim across the English Channel (1875)
• World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies (1944)
• Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Saturn (1981) and Neptune (1989)
• Linus Torvalds announces the first version of Linux (1991)
• Voyager 1 becomes the first man-made object to enter interstellar space (2012)

It’s the birthday of —

• Ivan the Terrible, monarch (1530)
• Allan Pinkerton, detective and spy (1819)
• Bret Harte, author and poet (1836)
• Ludwig II of Bavaria, Swan King and mad monarch (1845)
• Hans Krebs, Nobel laureate (1900)
• Michael Rennie, actor (1909)
• Ruby Keeler, actress and dancer (1910)
• Walt Kelly, cartoonist (1913)
• Frederick Robbins, Nobel laureate (1916)
• Mel Ferrer, actor and director (1917)
• Leonard Bernstein, conductor and composer (1918)
• George Wallace, Alabama governor (1919)
• Monty Hall, game show host (1921)
• Sean Connery, actor (1930)
• Regis Philbin, television host (1931)
• Frederick Forsyth, author (1938)
• Rollie Fingers, baseball player (1946)
• Gene Simmons, singer-songwriter, leader of Kiss (1949)
• Elvis Costello, singer-songwriter (1954)
• Tim Burton, director and producer (1958)
• Billy Ray Cyrus, country musician (1961)
• Blair Underwood, actor (1964)
• Rachael Ray, television chef (1968)
• Claudia Schiffer, supermodel (1970)

Deaths —

• Pliny the Elder, Roman commander and philosopher (79)
• David Hume, economist and philosopher (1776)
• James Watt, engineer and electrical unit namesake (1819)
• Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1900)
• Henri Becquerel, chemist and Nobel laureate (1908)
• John Birch, soldier and missionary, supposed first victim of the Cold War (1945)
• Alfred Kinsey, sexologist (1956)
• Paul Muni, actor (1967)
• George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party (1967)
• Stan Kenton, jazz pianist and composer (1979)
• Gower Champion, director and choreographer (1980)
• Truman Capote, author (1984)
• Carl Barks, creator of Uncle Scrooge (2000)
• Aaliyah, singer and dancer (2001)
• Ted Kennedy, US senator (2009)
• Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on the Moon (2012)

Holidays and Celebrations —

• Day of Songun (North Korea)
• Independence Day (Uruguay)
• Liberation Day (Paris)
• Opiconsivia (ancient Rome)
• Soldier’s Day (Brazil)

Informal and made-up holidays include Kiss and Make Up Day, National Park Service Day, National Second-Hand Wardrobe Day, and National Whisky Sour Day.

(*O.S., or Old Style, when used, refers to the fact that Russia did not convert from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar until 1918.)