Captain Commander Vitus Bering was Danish on the outside and Russian on the inside and place of residence. On this day, the experienced navigator discovered and mapped the “coast” of North America “safe for navigation” – Alaska, which he had not noticed due to the fog thirteen years earlier. It brought no joy for Bering — the scurvy would soon kill him on the Commander Islands, which he discovered and which were later named in his honor. Alaska did not make Bering’s new home happy either — “the box of ice” was sold to the United States in 1867 for a funny price of USD 5 per square kilometer. The graduates of the Soviet universities benefited much later because they avoided being sent farther than Chukotka. The United States was also on the winning side, as gold was found in Alaska in the late 19th century.
