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
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.

Russia wanted to sell its Alaska territory, which was remote
and difficult to defend, to the U.S. rather than risk losing it
in battle with a rival such as Great Britain.

Treasury warrant in the amount of $7.2 million for the
purchase of Alaska. (Department of the Treasury;
National Archives)

                 (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872)

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.