Today in History: July 18

1817: The English novelist Jane Austen, who wrote such classics as Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), died in Winchester, Hampshire, at age 41.

1870: The first Vatican Council, also known as Vatican I, decrees the doctrine of Papal infallibility

The doctrine claims that the Pope cannot err when speaking on issues of morality and faith.

1925: The first volume of Mein Kampf, the political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler that became the bible of Nazism in Germany’s Third Reich, was published this day in 1925, and two years later the second volume appeared. The original title was the catchy “Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice”. Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical book was written while he served his sentence for treason in prison. 

1940: On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

1968: Intel is founded in Santa Clara, California, the Intel Corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer.

1970: Radio 1 DJ Kenny Everett was sacked after he joked on air that the wife of the conservative transport minister Mary Peyton had ‘crammed a fiver into the examiner’s hand’ when taking her driving test.

1983: When a suicide bomber drives a van packed with explosives into the compound of the US embassy in Beirut, 63 people are killed and more than 120 injured.

1986: On July 18, 1986, new close-up videotapes of the sunken ocean liner Titanic were released to the public. Taken on the first manned expedition to the wreck, the videotapes are stunning in their clarity and detail, showing one of the ship’s majestic grand staircases and a coral-covered chandelier swinging slowly in the ocean current.

1989: On July 18, 1989, the 21-year-old actress Rebecca Schaeffer is murdered at her Los Angeles home by Robert John Bardo, a mentally unstable man who had been stalking her. Schaeffer’s death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation aimed at preventing stalking.

1993: Agathe Uwilingiyimana elected as Prime Minister of Rwanda

Rwanda’s only female prime minister’s tenure was cut short when she was assassinated at the outset of the Rwandan genocide.

1995: On July 18, 1995, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, a memoir by a little-known law professor named Barack Obama, is published. Obama wrote the book before entering politics; 13 years after it was published, he was elected America’s 44th president.

2013: The government of Detroit declares bankruptcy

The city, which was up to $20 billion in debt, became the largest municipal entity in the United States to declare bankruptcy.

BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: July 18

Richard Branson, 74 years

Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950. A British entrepreneur and adventurer, head of Virgin Group Ltd., known for his publicity stunts, also for setting records in powerboat racing and hot-air ballooning.

Branson who was a school dropout, entered into his first successful business venture as a teenager with the magazine ‘Student’. When the magazine began losing money in the late 1960s, he formed Virgin Mail Order Records (so named because Branson considered himself inexperienced in business) to raise funds, and in 1971 he opened the first British discount record store. In 1973 he helped form Virgin Records, which quickly became the principal label worldwide for punk and new wave. In 1984 he became the majority backer of the airline that he renamed Virgin Atlantic Airways. Beginning with a single aircraft, the carrier succeeded despite fierce opposition from established airlines, and in 1992 Branson sold Virgin Records to raise additional money for Virgin Atlantic.

By the 1990s the Virgin conglomerate, which was among the largest privately held companies in the United Kingdom.

Nelson Mandela (July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013)

Nelson Mandela also known as Madiba was born on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, South Africa.  He was a South African politician, the President of South Africa, and a Nobel Prize laureate.

His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts. He died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95.