On July 18, 1969, a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard; although Kennedy managed to escape the submerged vehicle, his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. (Kennedy subsequently pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a suspended two-month jail sentence.)

On this date:

In A.D. 64, the Great Fire of Rome began. Although Emperor Nero was probably not in Rome at the time, the public believed he started it so that he could rebuild Rome according to his plans. Nero blamed the Christians, and they were persecuted as a result. Nero rebuilt Rome after the fire and commissioned the “Domus Aurea.”

In 1195, the Almohads were victorious over the forces of King Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos.

In 1536, the English Parliament passed an act declaring the authority of the pope void in England.

In 1792, John Paul Jones, naval hero of the American Revolution, died in Paris. Born John Paul in Scotland on July 6, 1747, he apprenticed at age thirteen to a shipowner and sailed to Barbados. Owing to problems on another voyage to the West Indies (in 1773 he killed a sailor during a mutiny in Tobago, claiming self-defense), he fled to Virginia and changed his name—first to John Jones, and later to John Paul Jones.

In 1817, the English novelist Jane Austen died in Winchester, Hampshire.

In 1863, nearly half of the men in the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, one of the first black U.S. Army regiments, are killed or wounded in an assault on Confederate Fort Wagner in South Carolina.

In 1872, Britain introduced the concept of voting by secret ballot.

In 1909, Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister from 1957 to 1985, was born.

In 1918, American and French forces launched a counteroffensive against the Germans during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I.

In 1925, “Mein Kampf” was published.

On July 18, 1925, the brownest of all brown books was launched. From this day on, fanatic supporters, bitter opponents and all the people who buried their heads in the sand were able to read Adolf Hitler’s future campaign plans. “The Jew is the maggot in a decomposing corpse, a pestilence worse than the Black Death, a pernicious bacillus, a human bacterium, a parasite thriving on the substance of other nations, a spider gradually leeching the blood from our pores, a bloody fighting gang of rats,” wrote Hitler, heralding the later extermination of the Jews.

Yet single-party rule, terror regimes and the invasion of eastern Europe have also been reading matter since July 18, 1925.

“If only somebody had read this book!” sigh the people working on the history of National Socialism in Germany. But it would have made tough and unpleasant reading.

The man who believed he was chosen to “embody the German nature and spirit at the top of a nationally-determined pyramid,” wrote German that left a great deal to be desired. It is generous proof that readers did not edit it until after publication — 2,300 times between 1925 and 1930.

The historian, Joachim Fest, wrote a Hitler biography that spoke about the “twisted, worm-like periods with complex amalgamations of an academic searching for paradise and Austrian working-class pompousness.”

For example, when Adolf Hitler wrote: “I then gradually arrived at a rock-solid basis for my own convictions, and, since this time, have never been forced to change my personal views on this issue.”

The book, whose original title was to be “Four years of battle against lies, idiocy and cowardice,” made its author a millionaire. Few authors have made so much money with one book.

Until 1945, when the Allies banned the Germans from printing, purchasing or reading the book, a total of 20 million copies were printed. However, only a few of them were sold. “Mein Kampf” was distributed in an organized way. Every party member received one, the state railways introduced “Mein Kampf” as a gift to long-serving employees and, after 1933, the state decreed that the book should be given to newlywed couples.

Volume one of “Mein Kampf” was written by Hitler in 1924 in Landsberg prison. The trained decorator, who was born in 1889 in Braunau, Austria, was sentenced to a five-year jail term. He was charged with high treason after an attempted coup against the government and for causing the death of twenty people, taking hostages and armed robbery.

However, Hitler was set free again after six months. The first edition of volume one comprised 10,000 copies. The second edition was printed in December 1925 with 18,000 copies. Not a bad start for the difficult-to-read agenda of a party that only had 50,000 members in the entire country at the time.

Volume two of the book was written after his release. At the same time, the leader of all German National Socialists was able to re-establish his extreme right-wing party, the National Socialist Party of Germany (NSDAP) in February 1925 after it had been banned in November 1923.

Yet how could someone who possessed no obvious talent until the 30th year of his life, other than hanging around and creating a fuss, be capable of reducing half the world to rubble?

“However, I decided to become a politician,” Hitler wrote. Wrong, says the British Hitler biographer, Ian Kershaw. Because Hitler did not choose politics, it chose him. As a result of “revolution and the Soviet Republic, it came to his barracks,” says Kershaw.

There are many telling quotes from “Mein Kampf,” such as: “A nation in the age of race pollution that devotes itself to nurturing the best racial elements will one day rule the world. This is something that followers of our movement should never forget when the number of victims lead to a cowardly comparison with the potential for success.”

The number of victims that Hitler talked about is a well-known fact. Sixty million people were subjected to terrible deaths during the Second World War, and the majority of European Jews were murdered. There were millions of refugees, hunger, poverty and cold. This book “Mein Kampf” marked the beginning of it all.

In 1927, baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb got his 4,000th career hit.

This baseball card featuring Chas O’Leary and Tyrus Cobb, produced by the American Tobacco Company in 1912, shows Cobb sliding into third base.

In 1932, the United States and Canada signed a treaty to develop the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began as Gen. Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in North Africa.

The military plot began to unfold as conflict in Spain grew. Throughout the country the dialogue between left and right had broken down, and compromise and restraint seemed hopeless as political violence increased. On April 13 a series of murders began when a judge who had recently sentenced a Falangist to 30 years in prison for killing a socialist newsboy was shot in Madrid. The following day a group of socialists killed a Civil Guard lieutenant in retaliation. Two months later right-wing and left-wing politicians argued bitterly in the Cortes, the Spanish parliament.

The events that triggered the coup began on July 12 when three Falangists murdered Lieutenant José Castillo, a pro-republican officer in the Assault Guards, a government paramilitary group. Later that night, in the early hours of July 13th, Assault Guards in uniform went to the home of José Calvo Sotelo, an anti-republican leader of an Alfonsine monarchist group. They murdered him in a police truck and dumped his body at a nearby cemetery. News of his death moved the conspirators to set their plans in motion. Four days later the military rebellion began.

The generals who rose against the Second Republic on July 17 were confident of an early victory. However, their attempt to seize power and establish a military directory throughout Spain was only partially successful. In cities that supported the Second Republic, such as Zaragoza and Seville, the insurgents quickly gained control by taking over military garrisons and other strategic facilities. This denied working-class organizations the time to mount an effective defense against the rebellion. In areas where most people already opposed the republic, enthusiastic crowds greeted the rebels. The rebels won the support of traditionally conservative towns and villages, such as Burgos, Salamanca, and Ávila.

The military rebellion initially failed in Spain’s capital, Madrid, and several other key cities, including Barcelona and Valencia. Leftist trade unions, civilian militias, and military and police forces who remained loyal to the republic successfully defended their cities against the insurgents. The rebels suffered another setback when nearly two-thirds of Spain’s naval fleet declared its support for the republic. This development took the rebels by surprise. General Franco had planned to use the navy to transport his highly trained Army of Africa from Morocco to join the rebellion on the Spanish mainland. To get his troops to Spain, Franco urgently appealed for aid from Italy and Germany. At the end of July, German dictator Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent transport planes that assisted Franco in the first major airlift in modern warfare.

In 1940, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominated President Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term in office.

In 1944, Allied forces captured the French town of Saint-Lô, a vital communications centre, during World War II.

Young German soldiers, waving white handkerchiefs, surrender to the Americans at St. Lô.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed a Presidential Succession Act which placed the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore next in the line of succession after the vice president.

In 1984, gunman James Huberty opened fire at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif., killing 21 people before being shot dead by police.

In 1984, Walter F. Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in San Francisco.

In 1989, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, 21, was shot to death at her Los Angeles home by obsessed fan Robert Bardo, who was later sentenced to life in prison. The killing prompted California in 1990 to pass the nation’s first anti-stalking law.

In 1994, a bomb hidden in a van destroyed a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85.

in 1998, a 23-foot tsunami along the coast of Papua New Guinea killed nearly 3,000 people.

In 1999, ten years ago, authorities looking into the disappearance of the plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and sister-in-law announced that the “search and rescue” operation had become “search and recovery.”

In 1999, David Cone of the New York Yankees pitched the 14th perfect game in modern major league baseball history against the Montreal Expos, leading his team to a 6-0 victory.

In 1999, Paul Lawrie won the British Open in a three-way playoff after Jean Van de Velde triple-bogeyed on the 72nd hole.

In 2003, basketball star Kobe Bryant was charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman at a Colorado spa. (The charge was later dropped because the woman did not want to go ahead with a trial.)

In 2003, the body of British scientist David Kelly, a weapons expert at the center of a storm over British intelligence on Iraq, was found, an apparent suicide.

In 2004, five years ago, a spokesman said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would not apologize for mocking certain lawmakers as “girlie men,” despite criticisms from Democrats that the remark was sexist and homophobic.

In 2004, Todd Hamilton beat Ernie Els in a playoff to win the British Open.

In 2004, former EPA chief Anne Gorsuch Burford died in Aurora, Colo., at age 62.

In 2005, an unrepentant Eric Rudolph was sentenced in Birmingham, Ala., to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse.

In 2005, retired Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, died at age 91

In 2008, one year ago, one of the world’s largest mobile cranes collapsed at a refinery in southeast Houston, killing four people and injuring seven others.

In 2008, two French humanitarian aid workers were kidnapped in Afghanistan’s Day Kundi province. (They were released about two weeks later.)

In 2008, the epic Batman sequel “The Dark Knight,” starring Christian Bale as the caped crusader and Heath Ledger as the Joker, premiered.

Today’s Birthdays

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is 91. Former Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, is 88. Skating champion and commentator Dick Button is 80. Movie director Paul Verhoeven is 71. Singer Brian Auger is 70. Singer Dion DiMucci is 70. Actor James Brolin is 69. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre is 69. Singer Martha Reeves is 68. Blues guitarist Lonnie Mack is 68. Pop-rock musician Wally Bryson (The Raspberries) is 60. Country-rock singer Craig Fuller (Pure Prairie League) is 60. Actress Margo Martindale is 58. Singer Ricky Skaggs is 55. Rock musician Nigel Twist (The Alarm) is 51. Actress Anne-Marie Johnson is 49. Actress Elizabeth McGovern is 48. Rock musician John Hermann (Widespread Panic) is 47. Rock musician Jack Irons is 47. Actor Vin Diesel is 42. Former NBA player Penny Hardaway is 38. Los Angeles Angels centerfielder Torii Hunter is 34. Dance music singer-songwriter M.I.A. is 34. Rock musician Daron Malakian (System of a Down; Scars on Broadway) is 34. Rock musician Tony Fagenson (Eve 6) is 31. Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Deion Branch is 30. Movie director Jared Hess is 30. Actor Jason Weaver is 30. Actress Kristen Bell is 29. Rock singer Ryan Cabrera is 27. Christian-rock musician Aaron Gillespie (Underoath) is 26. Actor Chace Crawford is 24. Bluegrass musician Joe Dean Jr. (Dailey & Vincent) is 20.

Today’s Historic Birthdays

Hermann Von Reichenau
7/18/1013 – 9/24/1054
German poet, astronomer and mathematician

Robert Hooke
7/18/1635 – 3/3/1703
English physicist

Royall Tyler
7/18/1757 – 8/26/1826
American lawyer, teacher and dramatist

William Makepeace Thackeray
7/18/1811 – 12/24/1863
English novelist

Philip Snowden
7/18/1864 – 5/15/1937
English Labor Party leader

Vidkun Quisling
7/18/1887 – 10/24/1945
Norwegian official; collaborated with Germany during World War II

Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999), French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for innovations associated with the nouveau roman (new novel) in France. Sarraute and other practitioners of the nouveau roman challenged the traditional form of the realistic novel; her writings considerably influenced the conception and craft of the modern novel.

Victor Gruen
7/18/1903 – 2/14/1980
Austrian-born American architect and city planner

S. I. Hayakawa
7/18/1906 – 2/27/1992
Canadian-born American scholar and U. S. senator (1977-83)

Andrey Gromyko
7/18/1909 – 7/2/1989
Soviet statesman

Clifford Odets
7/18/1906 – 8/14/1963
American stage and motion-picture writer and director

Thought for Today

“In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.” — Heinrich Heine, German poet and critic (1797-1856).

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Full article: http://www.boston.com/news/history/articles/2009/07/18/today_in_history___july_18/

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090718.html

http://www.todayinhistory.de/index.php?tag=18&monat=7&dayisset=1&year=2009&lang=en

http://www.britannica.com/eb/dailycontent/rss

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/onthisday.aspx

Photo (1): http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html

Photo (2): http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/ww2-pix/st-lo.jpg

Navy Blue Taylor Cotton Sundress – SIZE 8 (runs small in chest)

Folded pleating detail on straps and satin waistband

Dress falls 24 in. from waistband

NEVER WORN (tags still on it)

Asking price $40

Taylor is an independent design label.  The dress was purchased at a sample sale.