Today is Wednesday, Oct. 18, the 291st day of 2017. There are 74 days left in the year.

Birthdays: Sportscaster Keith Jackson is 89. Actress Dawn Wells is 79. Football Hall of Famer Mike Ditka is 78. Actress Pam Dawber is 67. Author Terry McMillan is 66. Writer Chuck Lorre is 65. Gospel singer Vickie Winans is 64. Director-screenwriter David Twohy is 62. Tennis Hall of Famer Martina Navratilova is 61. Hall of Fame boxer Thomas Hearns is 59. Actor Jean-Claude Van Damme is 57. Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is 56. Actor Vincent Spano is 55. Olympic gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn is 33. Jazz singer-bassist Esperanza Spalding is 33.

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

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 1967, Rolling Stone magazine was first published.

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.

In 2007, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, ending eight years of self-imposed exile; a suicide bombing in a crowd welcoming her killed more than 140 people, but Bhutto escaped unhurt. (However, she was slain in Dec. 2007.)

In 2012, in a case that would reach the US Supreme Court, the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that a federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman was unconstitutional and said the gay population had ‘‘suffered a history of discrimination.’’

Last year, President Obama hosted his final state dinner as he welcomed Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his wife, Agnese Landini, to the White House.