The 40-Year-Old Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline [History]

In 1724, Russian Czar Peter the Great sent Vitus Jonassen Bering, a Danish cartographer, explorer, and an officer in the Russian Navy, on an expedition to determine whether Asia and North America shared a common land boundary between them. The czar was interested in colonial expansion in North America and discovering a northeast sea route to China around Siberia. In 1741, on a second expedition toward North America, Bering mapped the Arctic coast of Siberia and eventually found the southwestern coast of Alaska and documented some of the Aleutian Islands.