Youtube Playlist (click top right icon for songtitles)
January
- January 1
- The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria.
- January 3 – Benito Mussolini makes a pivotal speech in the Italian Chamber of Deputies.[1] Historians now trace the beginning of Mussolini’s dictatorship to this speech.
- January 5 – Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor (Wyoming) in the United States. Twelve days later, Ma Ferguson becomes first female governor of Texas.
- January 25 – Hjalmar Branting resigns as Prime Minister of Sweden because of ill health, and is replaced by the minister of trade, Rickard Sandler.
- January 27–February 1 – The 1925 serum run to Nome (the “Great Race of Mercy”) relays diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled across the U.S. territory of Alaska, to combat an epidemic.
February
- February 25 – Art Gillham records (for Columbia Records) the first Western Electric masters to be commercially released.
- February 28 – The 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.
March
- March 1 New York City Fire Department Rescue 2 is put in service in Brooklyn.
- March 4
- İsmet İnönü is appointed prime minister in Turkey (Turkey’s 4th and İnönü’s 3rd government).
- Calvin Coolidge is sworn in for a full term as President of the United States, in the first inauguration to be broadcast on radio.
- March 6 – Pionerskaya Pravda, one of the oldest children’s newspapers in Europe, is founded in the Soviet Union.
- March 9–May 1 – Pink’s War: The British Royal Air Force bombards mountain strongholds of Mahsud tribesmen in South Waziristan.
- March 15 – The Phi Lambda Chi fraternity (original name “The Aztecs”) is founded on the campus of Arkansas State Teachers’ College in Conway, Arkansas (now the University of Central Arkansas).
- March 16 – At 22:42 local time a 7.0 earthquake shakes the Chinese province of Yunnan killing 5,000 people.
- March 18 – The Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest in U.S. history, rampages through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027. It hits the towns of Murphysboro, Illinois; West Frankfort, Illinois; Gorham, Illinois; Ellington, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana.
- March 31 – The Bauhaus closes in Weimar and moves to a building in Dessau designed by Walter Gropius.
April
- April–October – The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes is held in Paris, giving a name to the Art Deco style.
- April 1
- Frank Heath and his horse Gypsy Queen leaves Washington, D.C. to begin a two-year journey to visit all 48 states.
- The Patent and Trademark Office is transferred to the Department of Commerce.
- April 10 – F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.
- April 15 – Fritz Haarmann, a serial killer convicted of the murder of 24 boys and young men, is beheaded in Germany.
- April 16 – The Communist assault on St Nedelya Church claims roughly 150 lives in Sofia, Bulgaria.
- April 19 – Colo-colo, a well-known football club of Chile, is founded in Macul, suburb of Santiago.
- April 20 – Iranian forces of Rezā Shāh occupies Ahvaz and arrests Sheikh Khaz’al.
- April 28 – Presenting the Stanley Baldwin government’s budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announces Britain’s return to the gold standard.
May
- May 1
- In the Destruction of early Islamic heritage sites in Saudi Arabia, the al-Baqi’ mausoleums are destroyed by King Ibn Saud.
- Barcelona S.C. founded in Ecuador.
- The All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the world’s largest trade union organisation, is founded in Guangzhou, Republic of China.
- May 5
- Scopes Trial: Dayton, Tennessee, biology teacher John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin‘s Theory of Evolution.
- The General Election Law is passed in Japan.
- May 8 – African American Tom Lee rescues 32 people from the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman on the Mississippi River.
- May 16 – The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi‘s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria occurred in Paris.
- May 25
- Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin‘s theory of evolution.
- The National Forensic League is founded.
- May 29 – British explorer Percy Fawcett sends a last telegram to his wife before he disappears in the Amazon.
June
- June 1 – Percy and Florence Arrowsmith are married.
- June 6 – The Chrysler Corporation is founded by Walter Percy Chrysler.
- June 13 – Charles Francis Jenkins achieves the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound, using 48 lines and a mechanical system in “the first public demonstration of radiovision”.
- June 14
- The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece is founded.
- The Turkish football club Göztepe is founded.
- June 29 – The 6.8 Mw Santa Barbara earthquake affects the central coast of California with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), destroying much of downtown Santa Barbara, California and leaving 13 people dead.
July
- July 7 New York City Police Department Emergency Service Unit is created as the Emergency Automobile Squad.
- July 9 – In Dublin, Ireland, Oonagh Keogh becomes the first female member of a stock exchange in the world.
- July 10
- Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Monkey Trial” begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
- Meher Baba begins his 44-year silence.
- July 18 – Adolf Hitler publishes Volume 1 of his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.
- July 21
- Malcolm Campbell becomes the first man to exceed 150 mph (241 km/h) on land. At Pendine Sands in Wales, he drives Sunbeam 350HP built by Sunbeam at a two-way average speed of 150.33 mph (242 km/h).
- Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
- July 25 – The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established.
August
- August 1 – The New Cape Central Railway between Worcester and Voorbaai is incorporated into the South African Railways.
- August 8 – The Ku Klux Klan, the largest fraternal racist organization in the United States, demonstrates its popularity by holding a parade with an estimated 30,000-35,000 marchers in Washington DC.
- August 14 – The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is completed and goes on line.
- August 25 – The French complete their evacuation of the Ruhr region of Germany.
- August 31 – Anthropologist Margaret Mead lands in American Samoa to begin nine-months of field work that will culminate in her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa. The bestselling book will become the first popular anthropological study and will change many attitudes towards tribal peoples.
September
- September 3 – The U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah breaks up in a squall line near Caldwell, Ohio, killing 14 crewmen.
- September 27 – Feast of the Cross according to the Old Calendar; A celestial cross appears over Athens, Greece, while the Greek police pursues a group of Greek Old Calendarists. The phenomenon lasts for half an hour.
October
- October – The major money forgery and fraud of Alves dos Reis is exposed in Portugal.
- October 1 – Mount Rushmore National Memorial is dedicated in South Dakota.
- October 2 – In London, UK, John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image.
- October 4 – S2, a Finnish Sokol class torpedo boat, was sunk during a fierce storm near the coast of Pori in the Gulf of Bothnia, taking with the whole crew of 53.
- October 5–16 – The Locarno Treaties are negotiated.
- October 6 — Xavier University of Louisiana, America’s first and only historically-Black Catholic university is founded in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2000, it became the only Catholic university founded by a saint. (Another university’s founder was canonized in 2006.)
- October 8 – Cubana de Aviación is founded.
- October 15 – The Pittsburgh Pirates become the first MLB franchise to recover from a 3-games-to-1 deficit by defeating the Washington Senators to win the 1925 World Series.
November
- November 5 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
- November 9 – Formal foundation date of the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler in Germany.
- November 14
- 1925 Australian federal election: Stanley Bruce‘s Nationalist/Country Coalition Government is re-elected with an increased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by Matthew Charlton.
- The first Surrealist art exhibition opens in Paris.
- November 17 – The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition, a world’s fair, opens in Dunedin, New Zealand.
- November 24 – The silent film El Húsar de la Muerte is released in Santiago, Chile.
- November 26 – Prajadhipok (Rama VII) is crowned as King of Siam.
- November 28 – The weekly country music-variety radio program Grand Ole Opry is first broadcast on WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee, as the “WSM Barn Dance”.
December
- December 1 – The Locarno Treaties are signed in London.
- December 11 – Pope Pius XI‘s encyclical Quas primas, on the Feast of Christ the King, is promulgated.
- December 16
- Reza Shah becomes shah of Persia.
- Alpha Phi Omega, a National service fraternity, is founded at Lafayette College.
- Colombo Radio launches in Ceylon; the station subsequently becomes known as Radio Ceylon.
- December 25 – IG Farben is formed by the merger of six chemical companies in Germany.
Date unknown
- Spring – Leica I 35 mm film still camera is introduced commercially in Germany.
- The Australian state of Queensland introduces a 44-hour working week.
- The Brisbane City Council, (Australia), is created from the amalgamation of 20 smaller cities, towns and shires.
- New York City becomes the largest city in the world, taking the lead from London.
- Lion Feuchtwanger‘s novel Jud Süß (translated as Jew Süss or Power) is published in Germany.
- The Shueisha Publishing Company is founded in Tokyo.
- Wheel gymnastics is invented in Germany.