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This day in history

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 24, the 297th day of 2017. There are 68 days left in the year.

Birthdays: Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is 81. Actor F. Murray Abraham is 78. Movie director David S. Ward is 72. Actor Kevin Kline is 70. Former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume is 69. Actor B.D. Wong is 57. Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Salem, is 39. R&B singer Drake is 31. Olympic gold medal gymnast Kyla Ross is 21.

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

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

In 1939, DuPont began publicly selling its nylon stockings.

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

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

In 1972, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, who’d broken Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, died in Stamford, Conn., at age 53.

In 1980, the merchant freighter SS Poet departed Philadelphia, bound for Port Said in Egypt, with a crew of 34 and a cargo of grain; it disappeared en route and has not been heard from since.

In 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays became the first baseball team based outside the United States to win the World Series as they defeated the Atlanta Braves, 4-3, in Game 6.

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

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In 2007, the Boston Red Sox flattened the Colorado Rockies in their World Series opener at Fenway, 13-1.

In 2012, hurricane Sandy roared across Jamaica and headed toward Cuba, before taking aim at the eastern United States.

Last year, campaigning in battleground Florida, a defiant Donald Trump blamed his campaign struggles on ‘‘phony polls’’ from the ‘‘disgusting’’ media. Hillary Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren pounded Trump, accusing him of disrespecting women and denigrating US troops assisting Iraqis in their push to retake the city of Mosul.