Today in history
Today is Today is Tuesday, Oct. 18, the 292nd day of 2016. There are 74 days left in the year.
On this date in the SCV: In 1988, The Signal reported that Wm. S. Hart Union High School District officials ordered an investigation into reports of drug use, sexual misconduct and physical threats by bus drivers while Newhall elementary school district officials said they may not renew their contract with Laidlaw, the carrier that serves both districts. Meanwhile, concerned parents began driving their children to and from school in order to prevent their children from being further terrorized.
Today’s Highlight in History: On Oct. 18, 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.
Ten years ago: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting Tokyo, said the United States was willing to use its full military might to defend Japan in light of North Korea’s nuclear test. The Dow Jones industrial average passed 12,000 for the first time before pulling back to close at 11,992.68. Five years ago: Fifty wild animals were released by the owner of a Zanesville, Ohio, farm, Terry Thompson, who then committed suicide; authorities killed 48 of the creatures, while the remaining two were presumed eaten by other animals. The Republican presidential candidates laced into each other in their latest debate, held in Las Vegas; Mitt Romney emerged as still the person to beat, even as he was called out on the issues of illegal immigration, health care and jobs. Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit emerged from five years in captivity as Hamas militants handed him over to Egyptian mediators in an exchange
for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One year ago: Habtom Zerhom, an Eritrean migrant, died after he was shot by an Israeli security guard and then attacked by bystanders who’d mistaken him for a Palestinian assailant in a deadly bus station attack in the southern city of Beersheba. The Mets breezed past the Chicago Cubs 4-1 for a 2-0 lead in the NL Championship Series. Actorcomedian Eddie Murphy was honored with the Mark Twain Prize, the nation’s top prize for humor, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
On this date: In 1685, King Louis XIV signed the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict of Nantes that had established legal toleration of France’s Protestant population, the Huguenots. In 1767, the MasonDixon 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. In 1892, the first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago was officially opened (it could only handle one call at a time). In 1922, the British Broadcasting Co., Ltd. (later the British Broadcasting Corp.) was founded. 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 1954, Texas Instruments unveiled the Regency TR-1, the first commercially produced transistor radio. 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.