On Oct. 18, 1767, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was settled, based on computations by English astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. (Hence, the Mason-Dixon line.)
In 1873 representatives of Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers and Yale Universities drew up the first rules governing intercollegiate football games. In 1892 the first long-distance commercial telephone service began, between Chicago and New York.
In 1967 an unmanned Soviet spacecraft dropped instruments on the surface of Venus, which reported that the planet`s temperature is hot enough to melt metal.
In 1968 Tommie Smith and John Carlos were suspended from the U.S. Olympic team after they gave black-power salutes from the victory stand in Mexico City.
In 1969 the U.S. government ordered a halt to the use of cyclamates, which had been linked to cancer, in food and soft drinks.
In 1982 former First Lady Bess Truman died in Independence, Mo., at age 97.