MONDAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, Oct. 24, the 298th day of 2016. There are 68 days left in the year.

Highlight in History:

On Oct. 24, 1962, a naval quarantine of Cuba ordered by President John F. Kennedy went into effect during the missile crisis.

On this date:

In 1537, Jane Seymour, the third wife of England’s King Henry VIII, died 12 days after giving birth to Prince Edward, later King Edward VI.

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and effectively destroyed the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph message was sent by Chief Justice Stephen J. Field of California from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., over a line built by the Western-Union Telegraph Co.

In 1945, the United Nations officially came into existence as its charter took effect.

In 1972, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, who’d broken Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, died in Stamford, Conn., at age 53.

In 1980, the merchant freighter SS Poet departed Philadelphia, bound for Port Said, Egypt, with a crew of 34 and a cargo of grain; it disappeared en route and has not been heard from since.

In 1996, Tyron Lewis, 18, a black motorist, was shot to death by police during a traffic stop in St. Petersburg, Fla.

In 2002, authorities apprehended Army veteran John Allen Muhammad and teenager Lee Boyd Malvo near Myersville, Maryland, in the Washington-area-sniper-attacks.

Ten years ago: American officials unveiled a timeline for Iraq’s Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm Baghdad and said more U.S. troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama offered mortgage relief to hundreds of thousands of Americans during a visit to Las Vegas.

One year ago: In a video released on Facebook, President Barack Obama called for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time, saying ,“Learning is about so muchmore than just filling in the right bubble.”

Today’s Birthdays: Football Hall-of-Famer Y.A. Tittle is 90. Movie director-screenwriter David S. Ward is 71. Actor Kevin Kline is 69. Singer-actress Monica Arnold is 36. Actress-comed ian Casey Wilson is 36. R&B singer-rapper-actor Drake is 30. Olympic gold medal gymnast Kyla Ross is 20.

Thought for Today: “There are three things which the public will always clamor for, sooner or later: namely, Novelty, novelty, novelty.” — Thomas Hood, British poet (1799-1845).