February 25

1791 –  Congress charters the First Bank of the United States for a term of twenty years.

1799 – Congress passes the Federal Timber Purchasers Act, giving the government authority to purchase wood and land to provide resources for the navy.

1836 – Samuel Colt is granted a U.S. patent for his revolver firearm.

1837 – Thomas Davenport is granted a U.S. patent of his electric printing press.

1843 – Royal Navy Captain Lord George Paulet takes it on his own authority to occupy the Kingdom of Hawaii in the name of Great Britain.

1862 – Congress passes the Legal Tender Act, which President Lincoln signs into law the next day,  and forms the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to print newly issued U.S. paper currency, the United States Note, nicknamed the ‘Greenback’.

1870 – Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in Congress.

1901 – The US Steel Corporation is organized under the chairmanship of J. P. Morgan, Sr.

1932 – Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship when he is appointed a Brunswick state official by Dietrich Klagges, a fellow Nazi. As a result, Hitler is able to run for Reichspräsident in the 1932 election.

1933 – CV-4 USS Ranger, the first purpose built aircraft carrier to be commissioned by the US Navy, is launched from Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co, at Newport News, Virginia, sponsored by Mrs. Lou Henry Hoover, wife of the President.

1951 – The first Pan American Games are officially opened in Buenos Aires by Argentine President Juan Perón.

1982 – Those who shall remain nameless are eternally grateful that the final episode of The Lawrence Welk Show airs.

1991 – At a meeting in Budapest, the membership decides to disband the Warsaw Pact.
In Dhahran, Saudi Arabia an Iraqi SCUD missile hits a building used as barracks for U.S. forces, killing 27 servicemembers and wounding another 98.