TODAY IN HISTORY

On July 18, 1918, South African anti-apartheid leader and president Nelson Mandela was born.

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 1969, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy left a party on Chappaquiddick Island with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28; Kennedy’s car later went off a bridge into the water. Kennedy was able to escape, but Kopechne drowned.

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

In 2005, Eric Rudolph was sentenced in Birmingham, Alabama, to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.

Detroit became the biggest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.