What a perfect reminder that Russia sold it to the US so long ago
There's a persistent myth, among the Russian population, that the ship carrying the gold (America paid us in gold) sunk on its return trip. Meaning that Russia actually sold Alaska to the US for NOTHING!
I was probably already 30 when I finally understood what happened.
In the end - the story is sort of half true... The money never made it to Russia, but not due to a ship sinking, but because it was all spent in Britain. The money was used to buy railroad equipment for the Kursk-Kiev, Ryazan-Kozlov, Moscow-Ryazan lines.
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At the time, it didn't seem like such a terrible decision. In America, contemporaries called it Seward's Folly - meaning even the Americans weren't sure it was a good investment.
Now we know it was probably one of the worst business decisions in the history of business. Within just two decades of us selling it, the Yukon Gold Rush began.
So we sold land at $0.02 an acre, literally just before a goddamn gold rush.
Events of the twentieth century just made the heartburn 10 times worse. Enormous oil field discoveries. Huge gas fields...
In the future, as the Arctic keeps thawing, America will probably gain trillions of dollars more of resources off the continental shelf.
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Meanwhile, we sold Alaska for $7.2M dollars - which even today works out to only $150-200M. Basically the price of a single strategic bomber which Ukraine destroys with toy drones.
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Ughhh... the pain of the Alaska sale... Made only better when you realize that retardus maximus Napoleon sold nearly half the Continental US to Thomas Jefferson for $15M.
At least we didn't do something as idiotic as the French.
The money they made from selling some of the best agricultural land on the planet didn't make one iota of difference to their war in Europe, but it set the United States on course for superpowerdom.