Today is Monday, October 18, the 291st day of 2010. There are 74 days left in the year.

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. (The French Parliament recorded the new edict four days later.)

In 1944, Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia during World War II.

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 1991, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia and Azerbaijan refuse to sign an economic union treaty with the Soviet constituent republics.

Thought for Today

"The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come. The strongest, and the rarest." — Milovan Djilas (1911-1995), Yugoslav author and politician.