Events

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.