Today in history

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 1867, the United States took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The cornerstone was laid for Baltimore City Hall.

In 1892, the first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago was officially opened. (It could handle just one call at a time.)

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

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

In 1954, Texas Instruments unveiled the Regency TR-1, the first commercially produced transistor radio.

In 1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine (which carried a cover date of Nov. 9) was published.

In 1969, the federal government banned artificial sweeteners known as cyclamates because of evidence they caused cancer in laboratory rats.

In 1977, West German commandos stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the four hijackers.

In 1997, a monument honoring American servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.