We know Russian explorers first sailed to America in the 1700s, but they didn't really explore or land enough to call it "well known" until the early 1800s. In

We know Russian explorers first sailed to America in the 1700s, but they didn't really explore or land enough to call it "well known" until the early 1800s. In 1725, Emperor Peter the Great ordered navigator Vitus Bering to explore the North Pacific for potential colonization. The Russians were primarily interested in the abundance of fur-bearing mammals on Alaska's coast, as stocks had been depleted by overhunting in Siberia. Bering's first voyage was foiled by thick fog and ice, but in 1741 a second voyage by Bering and Aleksei Chirikov made sight of the North American mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_colonization_of_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_colonization_of_the_Am...