Short answers, pulled from the story.
The United States purchased the islands in 1917 primarily out of strategic concern during World War I that Germany might seize them as a submarine base. A price of $25 million in U.S. gold coin was agreed, and the deal also included a U.S. acknowledgment of Danish interests in Greenland.
The United States paid $25 million in gold coin, a sum equivalent to roughly $614 million in 2024 dollars. The Treaty of the Danish West Indies was signed on the 4th of August 1916, and the sale was finalized on the 17th of January 1917 when both nations exchanged treaty ratifications.
No. Although people born in the U.S. Virgin Islands are U.S. citizens, residents of the territory are ineligible to vote in U.S. presidential elections. Their citizenship derives from congressional statute rather than the Constitution, and the territory has no voting representation in the Senate.
Hovensa was one of the world's largest petroleum refineries, located on Saint Croix. It could refine 494,000 barrels per day and at its peak contributed about 20% of the territory's GDP. The refinery ceased operations in early 2012, triggering a local economic crisis and a 13% drop in GDP.
Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck in September 2017, two weeks after Hurricane Irma. Sustained winds at the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on Saint Croix reached 99-104 mph and gusted to 137 mph. The office of congressional delegate Stacey Plaskett reported that 90% of buildings in the territory were damaged or destroyed, with 13,000 losing their roofs.
Slavery was abolished on the 3rd of July 1848 by Governor Peter von Scholten, following an uprising on Saint Croix. That date is now observed annually as Emancipation Day in the U.S. Virgin Islands.