Today 100 Years Ago – 7 May 1925

Looking Back a Century

Every morning in 2025 feels turbo-charged by notifications, crypto tickers and AI-generated headlines. To reset our perspective, I like to peel back the calendar exactly one hundred years and ask: what was everyone talking about right now? 7 May 1925 delivered a mix of high-stakes finance and solemn remembrance that still echoes in our world today.

1) Britain Re-Anchors the Pound to Gold

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On this day in 1925 the Bank of England quietly began exchanging paper pounds for gold bullion once more, enacting Winston Churchill’s newly minted Gold Standard Act. After the First World War had forced Britain off gold in 1914, the return was marketed as a triumphant restoration of stability. Clerks in bowler hats queued at Threadneedle Street to watch the first bars slide across polished counters, while newspapers hailed the pound’s "return to greatness."

But beneath the pomp, economists like John Maynard Keynes shook their heads, warning that locking the currency to pre-war parity would overvalue sterling and strangle jobs. Within six years, the critics proved right: Britain was forced off gold again during the 1931 crisis.

🔎 2025 mirror: A century later, we argue about digital pounds and stable-coins rather than bullion bars, yet the core tension—balancing national pride with economic pragmatism—hasn’t budged an inch.

2) Ten Years Since the Lusitania — A World Remembers

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Church bells tolled from Liverpool to New York on 7 May 1925, marking a full decade since the luxury liner RMS Lusitania slipped beneath the waves off the Irish coast, torpedoed by U-20. Survivors and bereaved families gathered at Cobh (formerly Queenstown) for wreath-laying, while Cunard staff unfurled black-edged flags at Pier 54 in Manhattan.

The commemorations were more than mourning; they were a barometer of post-war reconciliation. British dignitaries spoke of peace with Germany, yet many under their breath still called the sinking "murder on the high seas." Reporters noted how the ceremony’s silence was broken only by gulls and the distant thrum of new diesel engines—technology racing forward even as memories stayed anchored in 1915.

🔎 2025 mirror: Modern passenger ships pack biometric gates and satellite distress beacons, but we’re still debating maritime security amid rising geopolitical tensions. Remembering the Lusitania is a stark reminder that civilian safety on open water can never be taken for granted.