On Oct. 18, 1685, King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had established toleration of France’s Protestant population, the Huguenots.
In 1767 the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon line, was agreed upon.
In 1867 the U.S. took possession of Alaska from Russia.
In 1892 the first telephone line between Chicago and New York was opened.
In 1927 actor George C. Scott was born in Wise, Va.
In 1931 inventor Thomas Alva Edison died at 84 in West Orange, N.J.
In 1939 Bears legend Mike Ditka was born in Carnegie, Pa.
In 1944 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in World War II.
In 1950 Connie Mack, “the grand old man of Major League Baseball,” announced he was retiring as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.
In 1962 Dr. James Watson of the U.S. and Drs. Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins of Britain were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.
In 1968 the U.S. Olympic Committee suspended Tommie Smith and John Carlos for their “black power” salute during a ceremony in Mexico City.
In 1969 the federal government banned artificial sweeteners known as cyclamates because of evidence they caused cancer in laboratory rats.
In 1982 former First Lady Bess Truman died at 97 in Independence, Mo.
In 1989, after 18 years in power, Erich Honecker was ousted as leader of East Germany.
In 1997 a monument honoring American servicewomen was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2000 singer Julie London died at 74 in Los Angeles.
In 2001 CBS News disclosed that an employee in Dan Rather’s office had tested positive for skin anthrax. Also, four disciples of Osama bin Laden were sentenced in New York to life without parole for the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa.
In 2002 the Vatican demanded that America’s Catholic bishops revise their crackdown policy on predator priests.
In 2004 an Anglican church panel urged the U.S. Episcopal Church not to elect any more gay bishops and called on conservative African bishops to stop meddling in the affairs of other dioceses.
