You probably didn’t know it, but in December 2023, the United States got a lot bigger.
Specifically, the United States added about 1 million square kilometers to its territory. That’s approximately 386,000 square miles—roughly the size of two Californias.
Now, you would think that something like this would have been front-page news. But it actually went largely unnoticed—probably because the area in question isn’t a physical landmass.
Instead, the United States gained a million square kilometers (nearly 400,000 square miles) of premium seafloor real estate.
This expansion (just from a sheer size perspective) is the most significant enlargement of the United States since the year 1867, which is the year Alaska was purchased from Russia.
Join host Roman Balmakov on this week’s episode of “Facts Matter.”