Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 April 25

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), was a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family, and resigned all his offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council. After declaring his Catholicism publicly, he was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage. He took an interest in the British colonisation of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the southeastern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland. Discouraged by its cold climate and the sufferings of the settlers, he looked for a more suitable spot and sought a new royal charter to settle what would become the state of Maryland. Calvert died five weeks before the new Charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil. His second son Leonard was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland. (Full article...)

Statue of Rishabhanatha

• ... that Rishabhanatha (statue pictured), the traditional founder of Jainism, was said to be born in the age when there was happiness all around with no work for men to do?
• ... that Namibia is considering abolishing winter time?
• ... that the Australian cricketer Veronica Pyke was the second highest wicket-taker in the inaugural Women's Big Bash League season in 2015–16?
• ... that the Palau ground dove prefers limestone islands to volcanic islands?
• ... that when Marshall L. Shepard said the opening prayer at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, segregationist Senator Ellison D. Smith left in protest?
• ... that a campaign mailer for Los Angeles' Measure S designed to look like an eviction notice drew the ire of the sheriff's department after many recipients thought it was real?
• ... that professional figure skaters Stéphane Lambiel and Nobunari Oda had cameos in the anime series Yuri on Ice?
• ... that the US military refers to Death Valley's Rainbow Canyon as Star Wars Canyon?

Mary Keitany and Daniel Wanjiru

• In the London Marathon, Mary Keitany and Daniel Wanjiru (pictured) win the women's and men's races, respectively.
• A Taliban attack on an Afghan National Army base kills 140 soldiers.
• Turkey votes in a constitutional referendum in favour of replacing its parliamentary system of government with an executive presidency.
• A suicide bombing of civilian evacuation buses near Aleppo, Syria, kills more than 120 people, including at least 80 children.
• Emma Morano, the last living person born before 1900, dies at the age of 117.

April 25:

Violeta Chamorro

• 775 – Forces of the Abbasid Caliphate won a decisive victory over rebelling Armenian princes in the Battle of Bagrevand.
• 1644 – The Ming dynasty of China fell when the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng.
• 1849 – After Lord Elgin, the Governor General of Canada, signed the Rebellion Losses Bill into law to compensate the residents of Lower Canada for losses incurred in Rebellions of 1837, protestors rioted and burned down the Parliament buildings in Montreal.
• 1920 – At the San Remo conference, the principal Allied Powers of World War I decided upon the League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East.
• 1990 – Violeta Chamorro (pictured) took office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman elected in her own right as a head of state in the Americas.

Edward II of England (b. 1284) · Emer de Vattel (b. 1714) · Al Pacino (b. 1940)