Today in History: UN security council authorizes military action against Iraq

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on Aug. 25:

1936 – Sixteen opponents of Soviet leader Josef Stalin were executed after a show trial.

1944 – Paris was liberated when the local German commander surrendered to the allies.

1978 – The Turin Shroud, venerated by many as the burial cloth of Christ, went on public display for the first time in 45 years.

1990 - UN security council authorizes military action against Iraq.

1997 – Egon Krenz, East Germany’s last hardline Communist leader, was sentenced to six and a half years in jail for the deaths of citizens killed while fleeing over the Berlin Wall.

2000 – Hitachi releases world’s first video equipment to use Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) technology.

2001 – American singer Aaliyah dies along with eight others when passenger plane bursts into flames after taking off in the Bahamas.

2003 – Twin car bombs in India’s financial capital Bombay killed 51 people and injured at least 150.

2004 – South African police arrested Mark Thatcher, the son of Margaret Thatcher, on suspicion of involvement in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. Thatcher later pleaded guilty and avoided jail in a deal with prosecutors.

2006 – Former Ukraine Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko sentenced to nine years in prison and fined $10 million in a U.S. court after being convicted in 2004 of extortion and money laundering.

2007 – Former French prime minister Raymond Barre, an economist who helped set Europe on its road to a single currency, died aged 83.

2017 – Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas.

(Reuters)