First female army officer is commissioned

On July 18, 1792, the Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones dies in his Paris apartment, where he was still awaiting a commission as the United States consul to Algiers. Commander Jones, remembered as one of the most daring and successful naval commanders of the American Revolution, was born in Scotland, on July 6, […]

On July 18, 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler’s philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year. Hitler began […]

On July 18, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act. This act revised an older succession act that was passed in 1792 during George Washington’s first term. The original succession act designated the Senate president pro tempore as the first in line to succeed the president should he and the vice president […]

In her Olympic debut at the tender age of 14, Nadia Comăneci becomes the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in Olympic history. The young Romanian’s performance at the Montreal Olympic Games launches her into the international spotlight. Comăneci stirred up excitement on the first day of the Montreal games—July 18, 1976—which began with […]

On July 18, 1986, new close-up videotapes of the sunken ocean liner Titanic are 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. At […]

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. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s family—he […]