Robert Edward Crane (July 13, 1928 – June 29, 1978)

On October 17, 1974, Benji, a film about a stray dog who helps
rescue several kidnapped children, opens in theaters; it will
go on to become a family classic.

Written and directed by Joe Camp, Benji starred a mutt named
Higgins, who had been rescued as a puppy from a California
animal shelter and went on to appear in the 1960s TV series
Petticoat Junction and the 1971 movie Mooch Goes to
Hollywood, with Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Jessica McClure Morales (37) today.

CIA reference photograph of a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile in Red Square, Moscow.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between
the United States and the Soviet Union, when American
deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were
matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The crisis lasted from October 16 to October 28, 1962. The
confrontation is widely considered the closest the
the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear
war.

Cuban Missile Crisis, map of immediate-threat areas.

On October 16, 1958, Chevrolet began to sell a car-truck hybrid
that it calls the El Camino. Inspired by the Ford Ranchero, which
had already been on the market for two years, the El Camino
was a combination sedan-pickup truck built on the Impala body,
with the same “cat’s eye” taillights and dramatic rear fins. It was,
ads trilled, “the most beautiful thing that ever shouldered a load!”
“It rides and handles like a convertible,” Chevy said, “yet hauls
and hustles like the workingest thing on wheels.”