Today's Highlight in History:
On Aug. 25, 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
On this date:
In 1825, Uruguay declared independence from Brazil.
In 1875, Capt. Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, getting from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.
In 1916, the National Park Service was established within the Department of the Interior.
In 1921, the United States signed a peace treaty with Germany.
In 1943, U.S. forces liberated New Georgia in the Solomon Islands from the Japanese during World War II.
In 1950, President Harry Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
In 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was shot to death in the parking lot of a shopping center in Arlington, Va; former party member John Patler was later convicted of the killing.
In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager II came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.
In 1985, Samantha Smith, 13, the schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri V. Andropov resulted in her famous peace tour of the Soviet Union, died with her father in an airliner crash in Auburn, Maine.
In 1998, retired Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell died in Richmond, Va., at age 90.
Ten years ago: The tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida. Dow Corning Corp. offered $2.4 billion to settle claims from more than 200,000 women with illnesses related to silicone breast implants.
Five years ago: China set Nov. 8 as the date for its long-awaited Communist Party national congress. Louisville, Ky., beat Sendai, Japan, 1-0 to win the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, Pa. Former Swedish diplomat Per Anger, who had worked with Raoul Wallenberg in shielding thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps, died in Stockholm, Sweden, at age 88. Acclaimed bass-baritone William Warfield, best known for his rendition of "Ol' Man River" in the musical "Show Boat," died in Chicago at age 82.
