U6 Part5 B3

3. Nice ice at a reasonable price
  Napoleon did just manage to reach Moscow in his ill-fated invasion of 1812 — but it would seem that news of his poor American deal did not.
  For, astonishingly, the Russians went on to become the third victims of major land deals with America.
  On March 30th 1867, the U.S. Secretary of State, William Seward, bought Alaska from Tsar Alexander II for a mere $7.2 million — thereby acquiring another 586,000 square miles of territory for less than 2 cents per acre.
  The Tsar presumably thought that this remote, frozen and virtually uninhabited piece of land had nothing at all to commend it — and at first, the American people agreed with him, for Alaska was known as “Seward’s folly” and “Seward’s ice box” for years.
  In 1896, however, gold was struck at Klondike in the Yukon, and since then, over 750 million dollars’ worth has been mined.
  In 1968, black gold was discovered — and an estimated 100 billion tons of coal are also lying underground, just waiting to be dug up.