March 30 · This Day in America
Past midnight in Washington, Secretary of State William Seward and the Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl finish a treaty at Seward's own house and sign it before dawn. The price for nearly six hundred thousand square miles of mountains, glaciers, and coastline: $7.2 million, about two cents an acre. The newspapers howl. They call it Seward's Folly, Seward's Icebox, a frozen wasteland of no use to anyone. Seward never wavered. Decades later gold is struck in the Klondike, then oil on the North Slope, and the icebox becomes one of the richest places on the continent. The deal also quietly ended Russia's foothold in North America and pointed the young country toward the Pacific. Seward bought a future no one else could see.
Source: history.state.gov
Also on this day · 1981
Leaving the Washington Hilton, President Ronald Reagan is hit by a ricocheting bullet that punctures a lung; his press secretary and two officers are also gravely wounded. Reagan, seventy years old, walks into the hospital and nearly dies on the table, yet jokes with the surgeons, asking that they please be Republicans. He recovered. The near-miss reshaped his presidency and, years later, helped pass the Brady gun-control law named for his wounded friend.
Source: www.reaganlibrary.gov
“I hope you're all Republicans.”Ronald Reagan, to his surgeons, 1981