October 18 in History

The United States formally took possession of Alaska from Russia on October 18, 1867, adding 586,412 square miles of territory — more than twice the size of Texas — for $7.2 million, roughly two cents per acre. Secretary of State William Seward had negotiated the purchase, and his critics immediately labeled it "Seward's Folly," a frozen wasteland that would drain the national treasury. The critics would eventually be proved spectacularly wrong. Russia's motivation for selling was strategic rather than economic. Czar Alexander II feared that Britain might seize the territory in a future conflict, as Russia had no realistic way to defend such a remote colony. The Russian-American Company, which had managed Alaska since the late eighteenth century, was operating at a loss. Selling to the United States would simultaneously remove a military vulnerability and weaken Britain's position on the Pacific coast by placing an American territory adjacent to British Columbia. Seward, a fervent expansionist, recognized Alaska's potential even when most Americans could not. The purchase was negotiated in a single all-night session on March 30, 1867, and the treaty was signed early the next morning. The Senate ratified the treaty in April, but the House delayed appropriating the purchase money for more than a year. The formal transfer ceremony took place at Sitka, where Russian and American soldiers lowered the Russian flag and raised the Stars and Stripes while cannons fired. The territory spent decades as an afterthought. Congress provided no formal government for Alaska until 1884, and it did not achieve territorial status until 1912 or statehood until 1959. But the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 proved Alaska's mineral wealth, and the twentieth century revealed far greater riches: massive oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay, discovered in 1968, would transform Alaska into one of the most productive petroleum regions in the Western Hemisphere. The $7.2 million purchase price has been repaid many thousands of times over, making Seward's Folly one of the most successful real estate transactions in history.

Six wireless manufacturers formed the British Broadcasting Company on October 18, 1922, to provide radio programming that would encourage the public to buy their receivers. The consortium's modest commercial ambitions barely hinted at what their creation would become: the world's most influential public broadcaster, a global standard-setter for journalism, and an institution so embedded in British national identity that it earned the nickname "Auntie." The original company began regular broadcasts from London's Marconi House on November 14, 1922, with a news bulletin read by Arthur Burrows. Radio was still a novelty — fewer than 36,000 households held receiving licenses. John Reith, a 33-year-old Scottish engineer appointed as the company's general manager, quickly established an editorial philosophy that would define the BBC for a century: broadcasting should inform, educate, and entertain, in that order. Reith believed radio was too important to be left to market forces or government propaganda. In 1927, the British Broadcasting Company was dissolved and reconstituted by Royal Charter as the British Broadcasting Corporation, a public body funded by the television license fee rather than advertising. This funding model — independent of both commercial pressure and direct government control — became the template for public broadcasting worldwide. The BBC launched the world's first regular television service in 1936 and expanded into international shortwave broadcasting that would prove critical during World War II, when the BBC World Service became the most trusted news source for occupied Europe. The BBC's influence extends far beyond news. Its natural history programming, particularly David Attenborough's documentary series, has shaped global environmental awareness. Doctor Who, launched in 1963, became the longest-running science fiction series in television history. The BBC World Service broadcasts in over 40 languages to an estimated audience of 426 million people weekly. The corporation has faced periodic crises over political independence, funding, and relevance in the streaming age, but the model Reith established — publicly funded, editorially independent, committed to serving all citizens — remains one of Britain's most distinctive exports.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the Olympic medal podium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, bowed their heads during the American national anthem, and raised black-gloved fists into the evening sky. The image became one of the most powerful political photographs of the twentieth century. Within hours, the U.S. Olympic Committee suspended both sprinters and expelled them from the Olympic Village, turning a moment of silent protest into an international incident. Smith had just won the 200-meter final in a world-record 19.83 seconds, with Carlos finishing third. Both were students at San Jose State University in California, where sociology professor Harry Edwards had organized the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a movement that had considered a full Black athlete boycott of the Games. The boycott never materialized, but Smith and Carlos decided to make their own statement. The gesture was carefully choreographed. Smith raised his right fist to represent Black power; Carlos raised his left to represent Black unity. Both wore black socks without shoes to symbolize Black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf for Black pride; Carlos wore beads to honor those who had been lynched. Peter Norman, the Australian silver medalist, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in solidarity — a decision that would cost him his career in Australian athletics. All three men faced the flag and assumed their positions as the anthem began. The reaction was swift and harsh. International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage demanded their expulsion, and the U.S. Olympic Committee complied. Smith and Carlos returned home to death threats and struggled professionally for years. Smith was drafted by the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals but never played; Carlos played briefly before injuries ended his football career. Both found careers in athletics eventually, but the personal cost was enormous. The gesture, condemned as unpatriotic in 1968, has been increasingly recognized as one of the defining acts of athletic protest. In 2005, San Jose State University unveiled a 22-foot statue of Smith and Carlos on campus, fists raised.

"Call me Ishmael." Three words launched one of the greatest novels in the English language — and one of the most spectacular commercial failures in American literary history. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was published in London on October 18, 1851, under the title The Whale, and in New York on November 14 as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Critics were largely hostile, the public was indifferent, and Melville's career never recovered. Only decades after his death would the novel be recognized as America's epic masterpiece. Melville drew on his own experience as a sailor, particularly an eighteen-month whaling voyage aboard the Acushnet in 1841-42, and on the true story of the Essex, a Nantucket whaler sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. The novel follows Ishmael aboard the Pequod, commanded by the obsessive Captain Ahab, who drives his crew across the world's oceans in a monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale that had severed his leg. The narrative weaves adventure with philosophy, biology, history, and metaphysics in a style that bewildered Victorian readers accustomed to straightforward storytelling. Contemporary critics called it unreadable, pretentious, and mad. One London review dismissed it as "an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact." The American edition sold poorly — fewer than 3,000 copies in Melville's lifetime — and a warehouse fire destroyed most unsold copies in 1853. Melville continued writing but never again achieved even the modest success of his earlier adventure novels. He spent his final decades working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, largely forgotten by the literary world. He died in 1891, and the New York Times obituary misspelled his name. The resurrection of Moby-Dick began in the 1920s, when scholars and critics rediscovered the novel and recognized its extraordinary ambition and originality. By the mid-twentieth century, it was universally regarded as the great American novel — a work that explored obsession, nature, race, labor, and the human condition with a depth and daring that no American writer had attempted before. Ahab's quest has become one of literature's defining metaphors for destructive obsession, and Melville's reputation now towers over the critics who dismissed him.

Colin Powell grew up in the South Bronx, the son of Jamaican immigrants. He joined the ROTC at City College, served two tours in Vietnam, and rose through the Army to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first Black man to hold the position. He commanded the Coalition forces in the Gulf War. As Secretary of State he presented evidence of Iraqi weapons programs to the UN Security Council in February 2003. Much of it was wrong. He called it a blot on his record for the rest of his life. He died in October 2021 of COVID-19 complications, having been immunocompromised. Powell was born on April 5, 1937, in Harlem and grew up in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. His parents emigrated from Jamaica, and he spoke Yiddish as a child from working in a Jewish-owned furniture store. He graduated from City College of New York with a C average but excelled in the ROTC program, which launched his military career. He served as a military advisor in Vietnam in 1962-63 and returned for a second tour in 1968-69, during which he was injured in a helicopter crash. His rise through the Army was accelerated by the political skills he demonstrated in Washington assignments, serving as National Security Advisor under Reagan and then as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under George H. W. Bush, where he developed the Powell Doctrine: overwhelming force, clear objectives, and an exit strategy. His February 2003 UN presentation, which argued that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, drew on intelligence that proved fabricated or exaggerated. Powell later said the presentation was "painful" and the intelligence failure the "lowest point" of his career.