Today is Thursday, Oct. 18, the 291st day of 2018. There are 74 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

in History:

On Oct. 18, 1892, the first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago was opened.

On this date:

In 1648, Boston shoemakers were authorized to form a guild to protect their interests; it’s the first American labor organization on record.

In 1767, the Mason-Dixon line, the boundary between colonial Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, was set as astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey.

In 1898, the American flag was raised in Puerto Rico shortly before Spain formally relinquished control of the island to the U-S.

In 1931, inventor Thomas Alva Edison died in West Orange, New Jersey, at age 84.

In 1944, Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II.

In 1962, James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins were honored with the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.