Vitus Bering was a Danish explorer in search of new lands to discover. He discovered mainland Alaska and the Aleutian Peninsula in the year 1740. Bering was shipwrecked on the island that bears his name and died there during a miserable winter. Birthplace: Denmark.
Carl Eielson and Hubert Wilkins were the first to cross the Arctic Ocean in an airplane. They also explored Antarctica by plane. Eielson came to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1922 and set up both a commercial air route and the state's first air mail service. Birthplace: Hatton, North Dakota.
In 1880, Dick Harris and Joe Juneau founded the town that now bears Juneau's name. They had discovered gold nearby, and soon there were enough prospectors around to build a fairly large city, large enough in fact to be Alaska's capital city. Birthplace: unknown.
William H. Seward was the man who purchased the state of Alaska in 1867 from Russia. Known at the time as Seward's Folly, his foresight is obvious today. Seward was the Secretary of State under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Birthplace: Florida, New York.
