Alaska

 

Alaska

Alaskan sunset

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Why did Russia sell Alaska?

Russia discovered Alaska in the first half of the eighteenth century, claiming the coast for the Russian Empire in 1741. The first settlement was made on Kodiak Island in 1784, but it didn’t become a formal colony for another fifteen years.

Few Russians settled in Alaska, finding it inhospitable. Primarily, they traded in sea otter skins, which were popular with the Chinese, because of their fine, soft quality. Sea otters had been hunted almost to extinction by the first half of the nineteenth century.

Whaling and fishing were secondary pursuits, with a trade in ivory from walrus tusks. Timber and ice were plentiful and were sometimes supplied to Russia and, on occasion, to California.

In 1867, impoverished by its three-year war (1853-1856) and eventual defeat in the Crimea, Russia desperately needed money to return the country to some stability.

The US Secretary of State, William Seward, agreed to buy Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million. It was thought at the time to be an expensive, foolish purchase, and was denigrated as ‘Seward’s Folly’ and ‘Seward’s Icebox.’ The procurement added more than 586,000 square miles to the US, but no-one thought the remote territory a worthwhile economic purchase. There is historical disagreement over that opinion.

However, almost thirty years later, in 1896, gold was discovered. That precipitated the Klondike Gold Rush, which, followed by the discovery of oil, ensured that the acquisition of Alaska came to be celebrated.                                                             

Would Russia attempt to ‘reclaim’ Alaska one day?

April 21st

On this day . . .
In Italy this date is known as the Birthday of Rome because the Roman Empire was founded by Romulus and Remus in 753 BC.
Henry VII died in 1509 and was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII.
In 1789 John Adam was sworn in as the first US Vice President.
Charlotte Brontё was born in 1816 in Thornton, Yorkshire.
Noah Webster published the first American dictionary in 1828.
Texas won independence from Mexico in 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Mark Twain died in 1910 in Redding, Connecticut.
HM Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926.
In 1944 French women were enfranchised.
In 1961, at a war crimes trial in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann admitted his part in the Holocaust but claimed to be a small cog in the Nazi machine and not directly responsible for the murder of any Jews.
In 1966, Emperor Haile Selassie, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and Elect of God, visited Jamaica. The day is now celebrated at Grounation Day.
John W Young, USN commander of Apollo 16, became the ninth man to walk on the Moon in 1972.
In 1983 one pound coins went into circulation to replace paper pound notes in England and Wales.
Approximately 100,000 students gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989 to commemorate the reform leader Hu Yaobang. He supported economic and political reforms but was forced by hardliners to resign as a leader of the People's Republic of China.

Watch where you’re going!

Two US airline pilots were having such a heated discussion that they forgot to land the plane they were flying and 144 passengers were flown 150 miles beyond their anticipated destination. The flight lost contact with air traffic controllers for over an hour by which time fears were being expressed that a hijack might be taking place. Fighter jets had been put on stand-by.

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said that such an event was unlikely to happen in Britain since if an aircraft overflew its destination for 80 minutes it would have entered another country's airspace. Persistent calls from such a country would alert the CAA.

Suspicions have been voiced that rather than quarrelling the pilots actually fell asleep!