Ah, Alaska, America's 49th state and the Last Frontier. The home of salmon, gold, oil, and many kinds of wildlife. And a potential place of origin for World War III. In 1867, the Russian Tsar sold the territory of Russian America to the United States. The territory wasn't doing the Tsar much good, never really turning a profit, and proving to be an unnecessary thorn in the Empire's already strained relationship with the UK (which owned Canada), so the Russian government was open to any reasonable opportunity to offload it. Russia and the US being rather buddy-buddy in the 1850s...