On Oct. 18, 1685, France's King Louis XIV revoked the...

October 18, 2000

On Oct. 18, 1685, France's King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had recognized the Huguenots, the country's Protestants.

In 1767 the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon line, was settled, based on computations by English astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.

In 1873 representatives of Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers and Yale Universities drew up the first rules governing intercollegiate football games.

In 1898 the American flag was raised in Puerto Rico as Spain formally relinquished control of the island.

In 1944 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in their drive to Berlin in World War II.

In 1962 Dr. James D. Watson, an American, and British Drs. Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins were named winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.

In 1967 an unmanned Soviet spacecraft dropped instruments on the surface of Venus. (They would report that the temperature there is hot enough to melt metal.)

In 1969 the government ordered a halt to the use of cyclamates, which were linked to cancer, in food and soft drinks.

In 1982 former First Lady Bess Truman, 97, died of congestive heart failure at her home in Independence, Mo.

In 1997 a monument was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery to honor American servicewomen.