June 25th , 1950 

 

In Asia, war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula as forces from the communist North invade the non-communist South. United States soon joins the fighting on the side of South Korea. 

 

President Harry Truman: Korea is a small county, thousands of miles away, but what is happening there is important to every American.

 

1876

 

In Montana, the Battle of the Little Bighorn. That's where Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry are wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.

 

1973

 

On Capitol Hill, former White House Counsel John Dean begins testifying before the Senate panel , investigating the Watergate scandal.

 

I begin by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed, the president himself will be killed by it.

 

The scandal forces Richard Nixon to become the first president to resign the following year. 

 

1903

 

George Orwell, the author whose novels include Animal Farm and 1984 is born Eric Blair in Bengal, India.

 

And 1997

 

The reason why I love the sea I can not explain. That was the way to Italy. It happened to me.

 

Jacques Cousteau, the underwater explorer and filmmaker dies in Paris at age 87.

 

Today in History, June 25th, Tim Maguire, the Associated Press.