Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio.

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, 
died in his home in West Orange, New Jersey of complications of
diabetes. He was 84.

By the time he died, Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1,093
patents: 389 for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph.
150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage batteries and 34 for the
telephone.

The Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company‘s new
steamship, the Columbia, was the first commercial
application for Edison’s incandescent light bulb in
1880.

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.

The $7.2 million check used to pay for Alaska, equivalent
to $129 million in 2023. 

William Henry Seward (1801 – 1872)

The Saturday Evening Post was first published in 1821 in the
same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia, where
the Benjamin Franklin-founded Pennsylvania Gazette was
published in the 18th century.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

TIM MAGUIRE

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between
the governments of 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 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation
is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating
into full-scale nuclear war.

President Kennedy announces U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.