As Barack Obama broke off from his holiday in Martha's Vineyard to lead America in eulogising Ted Kennedy, just 10 miles away on Chappaquiddick a small wooden bridge provided a very different memorial.

Forty years ago last month, Sen Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge in Chappaquiddick after a day's sailing and hard drinking with a group of married friends and young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign.

After a carefully choreographed televised speech in which he admitted his behaviour had been "indefensible" but denied it had been alcohol-fueled, a Massachusetts court let the scion of the state's most powerful family off with a two-month suspended sentence.

The "Chappaquiddick incident" obviously did bot end his senatorial career but arguably put paid to his presidential ambitions.