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Today in History, October 18th

On October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally took possession of Alaska from Russia. Plus Moby-Dick's first publication and Edison's death.

By Grant Oster October 18, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published October 18, 2026

October 18 is best known as the day in 1867 when the U.S. formally took possession of Alaska from Russia. The date also saw Moby-Dick first published in London in 1851 and Thomas Edison die in New Jersey in 1931.

The big story: The U.S. Takes Possession of Alaska (1867)

Secretary of State William Seward never met a map he didn’t want to add to. In March 1867 he sat down with the Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl, and by March 30 they had signed a treaty selling Alaska to the U.S. for $7.2 million. That came to less than two cents an acre for about 586,412 square miles, roughly twice the size of Texas. Plenty of Americans were not impressed. They pictured a frozen wasteland, and critics mocked the deal as “Seward’s Folly” and “Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden.” Some of the scorn was really aimed at President Johnson, who was deeply unpopular. Congress went along anyway, and on October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally took control of the territory. Opinions shifted once gold turned up at Nome in 1899 and set off a rush. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and its oil and seafood later made that two-cents-an-acre price look like a steal.

More events on October 18

Year	What happened
1851	Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was first published, in London, under the title The Whale.
1854	The Ostend Manifesto argued that the U.S. should seize Cuba from Spain.
1860	British troops looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, the emperor’s Summer Palace near Beijing, as the Second Opium War ended.
1898	American troops raised the U.S. flag over Puerto Rico, which Spain handed over after the Spanish-American War.
1922	The British Broadcasting Company was founded. It became the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, in 1927.
1931	Inventor Thomas Edison died in West Orange, New Jersey, at 84.
1961	The film West Side Story opened in U.S. theaters. It went on to win 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
1963	Félicette, a stray cat from Paris, became the first cat in space. She parachuted safely back to Earth.
1972	The Clean Water Act became law, setting the first strict federal limits on pollution in U.S. waters.
1977	Reggie Jackson hit three home runs on three straight pitches in Game 6 of the World Series.
2007	Pakistani political leader Benazir Bhutto returned from eight years in exile. Hours later, a bomb struck her motorcade in Karachi; she survived but was assassinated that December.