in Africa. The Kalahari Desert (Dorsland in Afrikaans) is a large semi-arid savanna in South Africa covers 900,000 km Â² sand (350,000 square miles) that much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa.
The Oregon Territory, 1846. Along with territorial disputes with Spain and Mexico over the Southwest, the fate of the Oregon Territory was one of the major diplomatic issues of the first half of the 19th century.
For months the fate of Oregon statehood floated on shifting political coalitions distrustful of changing the fragile balance of power in Congress. It was known Oregon would be a free state, yet its newly elected senators--Joseph Lane and Delazon Smith--were proslavery Democrats. Finally Congress acted and on February 14, 1859, President Buchanan signed the bill. Oregon joined the federal union.