More than 35,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website calling for Alaska to be returned to Russia after 117 years of American rule.
Written in stilted English, the petition says that “groups Siberian Russians” crossed the Bering Strait more than 10,000 years ago.
Alaska was Russian territory until 1867 when it was sold to the United States for $7.2 million (£4.3 million).
Reminders of its days as an outpost of the Tsarist empire persist in the form of the distinctive domed Russian Orthodox churches dotted around some of the [the] towns.
The western tip of Alaska at the end of the Seward Peninsula – named after William Seward, the US secretary of state who handled the negotiations – is only 51 miles from Russia. » | David Millward, US Correspondent | Wednesday, April 02, 2014
