TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, OCT. 24, the 297th day of 2017. There are 68 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:

On this date in 1952, Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in Detroit, “I shall go to Korea” as he promised to end the conflict. (He made the visit over a month later.)

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 from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., over a line built by the Western Union Telegraph Co.

In 1931, the George Washington Bridge, connecting New York and New Jersey, was officially dedicated (it opened to traffic the next day).

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

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

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 2002, authorities apprehended Army veteran John Allen Muhammad and teenager Lee Boyd Malvo near Myersville, Md., in the Washingtonarea sniper attacks. (Malvo was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; Muhammad was sentenced to death and executed in 2009.)