In 1955 Quaker Oats bought bought about 19 acres of land in the Yukon Territory for $1, 000 and printed up 21 million deeds for one square inch of land. They set up and transferred the land to the Great Klondike Big Inch Land Company to make the company the registered owner and manager of the deeds.
Then in February Quaker Oats was blocked from trading the deed for a box top by the Ohio Securities Division until it received a state license for the "sale" of foreign land. Sounds like a politician trying to make a name for himself and so making a big deal out of nothing.
To get around the stupid injunction, the company stopped the trade-in offer and instead put one of the deeds in each box of cereal.
Of course it was all a bit of advertising bosh. Since none of the deeds, which excluded mineral rights, were registered, they were not legally binding and owners of the deeds never owned the land.
In 1965 all of the land was repossessed by the Canadian government due to $37.20 in unpaid back taxes.
To this day officials still get inquiries from people inquiring if they really own a square inch of land which today is part of the Dawson City Golf Course.
I didn't play chess in those days and so was oblivious to the 1955 U.S. Women's Championship which was probably the strongest women's
championship event up to that time even after the withdrawals of Mary Bain, Sonja Graf Stevenson and Eva Aronson.
Other top rated women players who declined invitations were Adele (Rivero) Belcher, Dr. Helen Weissenstein, Edith Weart, Kathryn Slater and Dorothy Williams. Among the participants however were defending champion Mona M. Karff and former champion Gisela K. Gresser.
It was an exciting battle with Irene Vines leading for six rounds, but she collapsed and the tournament ended in a tie between the former champion Gisela Gresser and Nancy Roos who were declared co-Champions.
Third place went to defending champion Mona Karff who began badly with only 2 points lost in the early rounds, but playing vigorous and aggressive chess, she won six consecutive games after the fifth round in a nearly successful attempt to overtake the leaders.
In the following game Roos seems to be lost, but when Gresser suddenly begins to play very passively, Roos seizes her chance and commences an irresistible K-side attack. There is an excellent article on Nancy Roos by Batgirl on Chess.com HERE
Nancy Roos–Gisela Gresser1–0A00US Women's Champ, New York1955Stockfish 15
Polish Opening 1.b4 A rare guest in tournament play, but it was a favorite
of Roos. e6 2.b2 f6 3.a3 An attempt at preventing ...Nc6 by playing 3.b5
does not confer any advantage on white and it can be satisfactorily met in any
number of ways. d5 4.e3 a5 5.b5 c5 6.c4 6.bxc6 bxc6 7.f3 bd7 8.e2 b8 9.c1 favors black. Poley,V (2326)-Sukhareva,E (2248) Taganrog RUS 2013 6...bd7 7.cxd5 7.f3 b6 8.cxd5 exd5 9.a4 9.d4 c4 10.c3 d6 11.e2 0-0 12.0-0 e7 13.d2 f5 and a draw was agreed even though black stands
well. Christensen,T (2280)-Hansen,C (2310) Gausdal 1990 9...d6 10.c2 e7 11.d3 Black is slightly better. Donguines,F (2380)-Nadera,B (2405) Genting
1995 1-0 (46) 7...exd5 8.a4 e7 In annotating this game IM Hans Kmoch
claimed that because the e-file is semi-open and white has no chance of
getting anywhere with an early e2-e4 a natural plan would have been 8...Bd6, ..
.Re8 and then bring the N oin d2 into action with ...Ne4 or ...Nf8. Gresser's
move is quite playable, too. However, 8...c4! puts white in an uncomfortable
bind. 9.f3 0-0 10.e2 b6 11.0-0 f5 12.d3 c8 13.bd2 The position is
equal and now both sides begin shifting pieces around in an attempt to come up
with a workable plan. Even engines don't come up with anything clear and five
Shootouts all resulted in drawn endings. fd7 14.c1 f6 15.a3 e8 16.h3 a8 Kmoch thought perhaps black's idea was to protect the c-Pawn with ...
Nc7-e6. This is time consuming, but white's position is quite passive so there
is not much she can do. Or, perhaps she was thinking of defending the c-Pawn
by ...b6. Who knows? 16...g5 is an interesting idea. 17.h2 h5 but
white has an equalizing counter in 18.e4 Here things get interesting. dxe4 19.dxe4 e6 20.xh5 c4 21.g4 c3 22.f3 c4 23.d6 xg4 24.xg4 cxe4
with equal chances. 17.b3 d4 Kmoch claimed that Gresser changed her mind
about the aforementioned maneuver with her N and with this move the game
becomes a struggle between two P majorities. He added that the change is
brought about by the importance of the c4 square and in order to have
sufficient influence on that square, black needs a N on b6 and so ...b7-b6 is
ruled out. 18.e4 e6 19.c4 White would have fared better by retreating
the Q. In that case, it's hard to suggest a productive plan of action for
either side. What can be said of this position is that as is almost always the
case, it's a bad idea to voluntarily walk into a pin as white does with this
move. ab6 20.d1 Safer was adding additional support to the N with 20.Nfd2 xc4 20...xc4 21.dxc4 xe4 As pointed out by Kmoch, black is ahead by a
protected passed P and ought to win rather easily. In reality things aren't so
simple! Five Shootouts from this position were drawn mostly because in the
ensuing endings black did not have a light squared B and so was unable to do
anything when white blockaded the P with a piece on d3. 21.dxc4 c7 22.d3 b6 23.c2 Roos realizes that she must try to advance her f-Pawn and this
move aims to support its further advance. Black is better here, but
fortunately for Roos, Gresser cooperates with her! f8 A strange retreat.
Better was 23...Ne5 24.c1 h6 Preventing Ng5, but she is seeing ghosts. 24..
.Ng6 was solid. 25.e1 cd8 Another passive move and now it's white who has
the initiative, but black is not yet lost as Kmoch declared. 25...h4
To meet 26.f4 with 26.Bxe1 is met by 26.h5 e7 27.f4 and black can
maintain an equal position by defending her K-side with f6 28.e5 d7
after which she can put up stout resistance. 26.f4 c8 27.h5 b7 This
time wasting maneuver repositioning the B has accomplished nothing and has
resulted in white's position being even better. As ugly as it is, the
defensive plan of ...Be7, ...Nd7 and ...Bf8 would have made things harder for
white. 28.e5 e7 29.e2 Defending the e-Pawn so she can play f5 c8
This loses quickly, but there is not much fight left in her
position. 29...d7 This hinders the dreaded advance of the f-Pawn 30.e6
But white has the advance of the e-Pawn as an alternative. fxe6 31.xe6 f6 32.g6 f8 33.f3 Resigning time is drawing nigh for black. xf3 34.xf3 d6 35.f5 d7 36.xh6 f7 37.g4 xe6 38.fxe6 xe6 39.g5 e1+ 40.g2 h4 41.gxf6 xh6 42.fxe7 xg6+ 43.xg6 xe7 and this ending is lost. 30.f5 g5 31.xg5 hxg5 31...f6 is no better. 32.f4 fxe5 33.f6 f7 34.xf7+ xf7 35.fxg7 exf4 36.gxf8+ xf8 37.xf4+ and wins 32.f6 gxf6 33.xf6 e6 34.h7+ f8 35.ef2 35.g6 Not that it matters, but this
forces mate. g7 36.e6 e4 37.xe4 e7 38.xg7 d8 39.exf7 h2+ 40.xh2 f8 41.xf8+ c7 42.e7+ b8 43.xb6+ a8 44.xc8# 35...d8 Avoiding
immediate mate, but equally fruitless was 35...Ke7 36.h6+ e7 37.xg5 f8 38.g6 xe5 38...f6 39.fxf6+ f7 40.f3 The Q covers e7 and Rg8# cannot
be stopped. 39.g8# This game was first auto-annotated at 12 seconds per
move using Fritz 17 and Stockfish 15. It's interesting that for a player rated
1888 that Roos' play was evaluated as having a weighted error value of 0.10
(very precise). If a player's moves exactly match the engine the score would
be a perfect 0.0, so a WEV of 0.10 is quite impressive. 1–0
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