On this day, Aug. 25 ...

2018: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before a 35-year political career that took him to the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, dies at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

Also on this day:

1718: Hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.
1916: President Woodrow Wilson signs an act establishing the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.
1921: The United States signs a peace treaty with Germany.
1944: During World War II, Paris is liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.
1967: George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is shot to death in the parking lot of a shopping center in Arlington, Va.
1980: The Broadway musical "42nd Street" opens.
1981: The U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 comes within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.

Author Truman Capote's remains have sold at auction. (The Associated Press)

1984: Author Truman Capote is found dead in a Los Angeles mansion.

Aaliyah's private funeral attracted tons of fans and stars, including Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Mike Tyson, Delroy Lindo, Lil Kim, Mya, Usher and Aaliyah's aunt, Gladys Knight. (AP)

2001: Singer Aaliyah, 22, is killed with eight others in a plane crash in the Bahamas.

This late 2003 file image obtained by The Associated Press shows an unidentified detainee standing on a box with a bag on his head and wires attached to him at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/File) (The Associated Press)

2004: An Army investigation finds that 27 people linked to an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad either approved or participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., died at age 77 in 2009. (Reuters)

2009: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal lion of the U.S. Senate, dies at age 77 in Hyannis Port, Mass., after a battle with a brain tumor.

2017: Hurricane Harvey makes landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental U.S. It would leave at least 68 people dead and cause an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas.

This Day in History: Aug. 25

Sen. John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war before a long Senate career, dies