On October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally took possession of Alaska
after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less
than two cents an acre.

Indigenous peoples had settled the unforgiving territory thousands
of years earlier. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square
miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by
William Henry Seward, the enthusiastically expansionist
secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.

Signing of the Alaska Treaty, The Alaska Purchase.

                    John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev

The Cuban Missile Crisis began on October 14, 1962, bringing
the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear
conflict.

Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range
missiles in Cuba—capable of carrying nuclear warheads—
were now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.

On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) made
the first-ever televised presidential address from the White
House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain
in order to help starving Europeans.

At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was
still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine.

Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S.
didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for
European economic recovery would fall apart.

                                    
TIM MAGUIRE

The tennis star is 44 years young today.

Devils Tower in 1890.

He called the “lofty and isolated rock” a “natural wonder.”

Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt Jr.
(October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919)

Devils Tower today draws more than half a million visitors
a year.