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On this day, the U.S. agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. the treaty was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State, William Steward and Russian Minister to the U.S., Edouard de Stoeckl. The purchase ensured access to the Pacific Northern rim.
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John D. Rockefeller entered the oil business in 1863 by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio refinery. After establising Standard Oil he controlled nearly 90% of the U.S. refineries and pipelines by the early 1880s. in 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Standard Oil was in violation anti-trust laws and ended it.
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Thomas Edison was not the first to invent the lightbulb, but he was the first to be credited for it. He began his research in 1878 on incandescent lamps. In 1880, after the lightbulb was "invented", Edison Electric Light Company began marketing its new product.
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Ellis Island served as an immigration station for more than 60 years until it closed in 1954. It was located at the mouth of the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. It's estimated that almost 40% of all current U.S. citizens can trace at least one of their ancestors to Ellis Island.
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The annexation of Hawaii extended the U.S. territory into the Pacific. a delegation was sent to Washington in 1894, but the new President, Grover Cleveland opposed it. When McKinley became President, it was finally annexed.
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In September, President McKinley scheduled a visit to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. This event was planned for years, but was postponed during the Spanish-American War. McKinley went to shake hands with a man named Leon Czolgosz. Czolgosz dropped the handkerchief to reveal a pistol, and fired twice.
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The Jungle was a book written to expose the conditions in meat packing plants and stockyards. Because of how the public responded to the novel, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed and conditions improved. To do research for the novel, Sinclair had gone undercover for seven weeks in various Chicago meatpacking plants.
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Ford's first model T was completed at the company's Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Ford built nearly 15 million model T cars between 1908 and 1927. It was said to be the longest production run of an automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972.
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This factory fire in New York City killed 145 workers. Most of the victims died as a result of the dangerous working conditions and lack of safety features. The tragedy brought attention to the sweatshop conditons in factories and led to the development of many safety laws and regulations.
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A famous women's suffragist, Alice Paul, founded the National Women's Party. This group acted very strongly towards this movement by going on hunger strikes and White House pickets. WW1 slowed their campaign but also helped their argument. Their war effort proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving as men.
