Alaska is bought from Russia
Two cents an acre, and it was called a folly
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Russian America was Russia's colony on the North American continent, run by a fur-trading company and inhabited by a few hundred Russians. Russia sold because the colony was indefensible against Britain and because the sea otter population was exhausted. Nobody asked the roughly 50,000 people living there, and the treaty distinguished between "civilised tribes" and others in a way that left title unresolved for over a century — settled only in 1971, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act gave land and capital to regional Native corporations rather than reservations.
For children
The United States bought Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. Many thought it a waste and called it "Seward's Folly". Thirty years later gold was found there, and later oil.
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