The Alaska Purchase: The History Behind America's Biggest Bargain | Sleep Story

Sleepless History: Sleep Documentaries · Mar 28, 2026 · 2h 2m

This episode features one of America's most remarkable forgotten stories. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. Two cents an acre. The press called it Seward's Folly. They were spectacularly wrong.

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In this episode of Sleepless History, we trace the full arc of the Alaska

Purchase — from the collapse of Russia's fur trade empire and the aftermath

of the Crimean War, to a secret treaty signed at four in the morning, a

brutal congressional bribery scandal…