Today is Thursday, Oct. 18, the 291st day of 2018. There are 74 days left in the year.

October 18, 2018 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

On this date in:

1892: The first long-distance telephone line between New York and Chicago officially opens (it could only handle one call at a time).

1648: Boston shoemakers are authorized to form a guild to protect their interests; it’s the first American labor organization on record.

1767: The Mason-Dixon line, the boundary between colonial Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, is set as astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey.

1931: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison dies in West Orange, N.J., at age 84.

1944: Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia during World War II.

1962: James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins are honored with the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA.

1982: Former first lady Bess Truman dies at her home in Independence, Mo., at age 97.

2008: President George W. Bush, speaking at Camp David, says he will host an international summit in response to the global financial crisis.

2017: President Donald Trump rejects claims that he had been disrespectful to the grieving family of a slain U.S. soldier in a phone call to the family.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Vast disparities between schools in Ohio are illustrated by Flushing Elementary School in Belmont County, which does not have a functioning bathroom, to Thomas Worthington High School in a Columbus suburb that has an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool.

The Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority is trying to evict tenants of two Fairview Gardens apartments that it says are selling liquor in Dixie cups during early morning hours.

Vinny Testeverde leads the Cleveland Browns to a 28-17 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, establishing himself as Coach Bill Belichick’s starting quarterback and quieting the quarterback controversy.

1978: U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is joined by Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum and former astronaut John Glenn at a rally in Campbell for U.S. Rep. Charles Carney and gubernatorial candidate Richard Celeste. About 2,500 attend, far more than showed up for Vice President Walter Mondale three days earlier.

Poland Mayor Russell Blake accepts the resignation of Fire Chief Dale Wegele and appoints Edwin Chinowth to the job.

An early morning fire in the furniture department at the Eastwood Mall Strouss store causes an estimated $80,000. Fire officials believe an employee or customer dropped a cigarette in a couch, which smoldered for hours.

1968: Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland, Republican nominee for vice president, speaks to a crowd of 1,000 at the Paramount Theater, criticizing independent candidate George Wallace as a man who shouldn’t have his finger on the nuclear button and “hippies and yippies” as long-haired unbathed protesters against the Vietnam War and for welfare rights.

A financial tug of war is apparently shaping up over control of financially revitalized Sharon Steel Corp. between two bidders: Alloys Unlimited Inc. and NVF Inc.

A two-alarm fire sweeps through a one-story frame warehouse occupied by Mahoning Bag and Burlap Co. on Pike Street. The loss is estimated at $30,000.

1943: Seven guests of The-House-by-the-Side-of-the-Road, a mission for the homeless at 446 W. Federal St., become ill after a meal of roast beef, potatoes and bread pudding.

Norman Honigberg, 18, of Youngstown hopes that his blood may be his means of giving life to Gerald Sacks, 3, of Cleveland, who is expected to die in two weeks from acute lymphatic leukemia. A blood donor who has recovered from the disease is needed.