Info, News, and Updates from Letters from Legends...

Why Did America Buy Alaska? The Alaska Purchase Explained for Kids

On March 30, 1867, the United States agreed to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. At the time, a lot of people thought the deal was ridiculous. Alaska seemed far away, frozen, and mostly unknown to many Americans. Critics laughed at the purchase and called it “Seward’s Folly,” as if the government had just spent millions of dollars on a giant iceberg. Turns out, that joke aged terribly. Today, the Alaska Purchase is remembered …

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George Washington at Valley Forge: Sink or Swim

When people hear “Valley Forge”, they often imagine a frozen nightmare: starving soldiers, bare feet in the snow, and George Washington standing grimly in the cold, somehow holding it all together through sheer willpower. That image isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete. Valley Forge was not just a place of suffering. It was a turning point. A moment when the Continental Army stopped being a loose collection of determined but inexperienced fighters and became a professional …

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Today in History: The Wright Brothers’ First Flight at Kitty Hawk

On December 17, 1903, two brothers tested a new invention that would change the way humans move around the world. On a cold, windy morning on the Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered, controlled airplane flight in history. It didn’t last long and it didn’t go very far. But it changed Everything. Who were the Wright Brothers? Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle makers from …

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The Gettysburg Address 162 Years Later

272 words, 10 sentences, 2 minutes in length. That’s all it took for President Abraham Lincoln to deliver one of the most impactful speeches in U.S. History: The Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 A few months earlier, from July 1–3, 1863, Union and Confederate armies fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with tens of thousands killed, wounded, or missing. A new Soldiers’ …

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A Very Big “First Day of School” for Congress

Imagine showing up to a brand-new school where the hallways are still dusty, some walls aren’t painted yet, and workers are hammering away while you unpack your backpack. that’s basically what happened on November 17, 1800 when the U.S. Congress met for the first time in the new capital city of Washington, D.C., inside the still unfinished United States Capitol building. For ten years, Congress had met in Philadelphia, but a law called the Residence …

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