June 25 in History

In 1947, a Dutch publisher in Amsterdam released Het Achterhuis ("The Secret Annex"), the diary kept by a Jewish teenager named Anne Frank while her family hid from the Nazis. The book became one of the most widely read testimonies of the Holocaust. Its power lies in its ordinariness: a lively, self-critical girl writing about family quarrels, first love, and her ambitions, all under the shadow of persecution.

The Korean War began in June 1950, when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. It grew from a civil conflict on a divided peninsula into an international war involving the United States, China, the Soviet Union, and a United Nations coalition. It ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving Korea divided to this day and hardening Cold War alignments in East Asia.