Pirate Arrests & the Mason-Dixon Line - This Weekend in History

In our recurring This Weekend in History segment, Nat Geo Library research manager Maggie Turqman highlights the big, the small and the curious events that have happened over the years on this weekend: November 15, 1763, the day when Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon began surveying a line to divide Pennsylvania and Maryland that would later have broad implications: the Mason-Dixon Line divided the northern non-slave states from the southern slave states, and set the stage for Civil War hostilities. On the same date in 1720, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were brought to justice in Jamaica as pirates. Both had their death sentences commuted for pregnancy. And on November 14, 1840 grandfather of impressionism Claude Monet was born.