Explore 22 October

A United States intelligence map of surface-to-air missile activity in Cuba, dated 5 September 1962.

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Central Intelligence Agency from Washington, D.C. · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Kennedy tells America about the missiles in Cuba

At seven in the evening on 22 October 1962 President John F. Kennedy went on radio and television to tell the American people that the Soviet Union had built launch sites for nuclear missiles in Cuba, ninety miles from Florida. He had known for a week; the country had not.

He announced a naval ‘quarantine’ of the island to stop any further military cargo reaching it, and set out a seven-part response that included stepped-up surveillance, reinforcement of the base at Guantánamo Bay and emergency meetings at the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Any missile launched from Cuba against a country in the Western Hemisphere, he said, would be treated as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

The speech turned a secret crisis into a public one and began the most dangerous fortnight of the Cold War. The Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles on 28 October.

André-Jacques Garnerin in an engraved portrait of 1802, with a balloon behind him.

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Edward Hawke Locker · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

The first parachute jump

On 22 October 1797 André-Jacques Garnerin rose over the Parc Monceau in Paris under a hydrogen balloon, cut himself loose at about a thousand metres and came down under a canvas parachute roughly seven metres across. It was the first recorded parachute descent by a person.

The canopy had no vent, so it swung violently on the way down and Garnerin was badly shaken by the time he landed — a problem later solved by cutting a hole in the top. A commemorative medal struck for the jump records the place and the date.

Sam Houston.

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Oldag07 (talk) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Sam Houston is sworn in as president of Texas

On 22 October 1836 Sam Houston took the oath of office before a joint session of the Texan Congress at Columbia, becoming the first elected president of the Republic of Texas. The ad interim government formed during the revolution came to an end the same day.

Houston had beaten Stephen F. Austin in the election. In his inaugural address he pressed the case for treaties with the Indian nations and for vigilance towards Mexico. His first term ran until December 1838.

William Miller, the preacher whose reading of the Book of Daniel began the movement.

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Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

The Great Disappointment

Tens of thousands of Americans had been told to expect the return of Christ on 22 October 1844. The date came from followers of William Miller, a farmer-turned-preacher who had worked out from the Book of Daniel that the Second Coming was close; when his own window of March 1843 to March 1844 passed, associates settled on the October day.

Nothing happened, and the day became known as the Great Disappointment. Many of Miller’s followers left him. Others regrouped around Hiram Edson and James and Ellen White, and in 1863 formally organised the denomination now known as the Seventh-day Adventists.