On This Day: Voyager 2 makes closest pass of Neptune

Aug. 25 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1609, Galileo Galilei exhibited his first telescope in Venice.

In 1718, the city of New Orleans was founded.

In 1875, Matthew Webb, a 27-year-old British merchant navy captain, became the first person known to successfully swim the English Channel.

In 1944, allied forces and the French resistance freed the city of Paris from German occupation during World War II.

In 1967, a sniper assassinated American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in Arlington, Va.

In 1984, In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's author Truman Capote died at age 59.

In 1985, Samantha Smith, 13, was killed with her father and six other people in a plane crash in Maine. Samantha's 1983 letter to Soviet President Yuri Andropov about her fear of nuclear war earned her a visit to the Soviet Union.

Photo courtesy RIA Novosti archive

In 1989, Voyager 2, after a 4 billion-mile journal, made its closest pass over Neptune, sending back images of southern lights and its moon, Triton, to Earth.

In 2006, Pulkova Airlines Flight 612 crashed near the Russian border in Ukraine, killing 171 people.

In 2009, U.S. Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, D-Mass., a liberal fixture in the Senate for 46 years, died of brain cancer at the age of 77.

File Photo by CJ Gunther/UPI

In 2012, former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died in Cincinnati. He was 82.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall on San Jose Island, Texas, as a Category 4 storm. Harvey killed more than 100 people and caused $125 billion in damage.

In 2018, a U.S. airstrike killed Abu Sayed Orakzai, the leader of the Islamic State in Afghanistan, and 10 other militants in Nangarhar province.

File Photo by Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA-EFE