February 25

In literary history

• 1601Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was beheaded in the Tower after his failed rebellion. Two weeks earlier his faction had paid Shakespeare's company extra to stage Richard II, hoping a play about a deposed king would move Londoners to rise. It did not.

Writers born on February 25

• Karl May (1842),
• Anthony Burgess (1917)

The Daily Canon for February 25

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche (1882).