50 Fun Facts About Explorers

To whom did Marco Polo dictate the stories of his travels while in prison?

Venice was at war with Genoa; his cellmate was a romance writer who turned the tales into Il Milione.

Roughly how far did Ibn Battuta travel, more than any pre-modern explorer?

That beats Zheng He's 50,000 km and Marco Polo's 24,000 km; he dictated his memoir, the Rihla, near the end of his life.

Ibn Battuta came from which present-day country?

He left Tangier in 1325 for the Hajj and did not return home for 24 years.

How many treasure voyages did Zheng He command between 1405 and 1433?

The Muslim eunuch admiral brought back a giraffe from Malindi that the court took for a mythical qilin.

Which Chinese monk's journey to India inspired the novel Journey to the West?

Wu Cheng'en wrote the Ming novel about nine centuries after the monk's death.

Which ancient Greek from Massalia introduced the idea of distant 'Thule' to geography?

His account of the tides is also the earliest known to blame them on the Moon.

The Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, possibly Leif Erikson's Vinland, is in which province?

It was occupied about 1,000 years ago — five centuries before Columbus.

What did Bartolomeu Dias reportedly first call the headland later named Good Hope?

King John II supposedly renamed it because it promised a sea route from west to east.

Vasco da Gama reached the coast of which modern Indian state in May 1498?

He landed near Calicut (Kozhikode) after crossing the Indian Ocean from Malindi in Kenya.

What did the native inhabitants call the Bahamian island where Columbus first landed?

He renamed it San Salvador; exactly which island it was is still debated.

Which cartographer first put the name 'America' on a map in 1507?

He honoured Amerigo Vespucci, who had argued the new lands were a separate continent.

Which explorer was the first European to see the Pacific, crossing Panama in 1513?

He was later beheaded with an axe by Spanish authorities along with four friends.

Who completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth after Magellan was killed?

He brought the Victoria home in 1522; Magellan had died at Mactan in the Philippines the year before.

On which island was Magellan killed in 1521?

He was shot in the neck with a poison arrow in battle with Lapulapu's warriors.

In 1542 Francisco de Orellana became the first European to sail the length of which river?

He had set out looking for the 'Land of Cinnamon' and ended up at the Atlantic; he founded Guayaquil too.

Juan Ponce de León led the first European expedition to which future US state in 1513?

The Fountain of Youth story attached to him has no contemporary evidence at all.

Coronado's expedition made the first European sightings of which natural wonder?

He was hunting the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola and found canyons and bison instead.

Jacques Cartier took the name 'Canada' from the language of which people?

It was their word for a settlement, applied to Stadacona (Quebec City) and Hochelaga (Montreal).

Samuel de Champlain founded which city on 3 July 1608?

He crossed the Atlantic between 21 and 29 times in his career.

What was the fate of Henry Hudson after his crew mutinied in 1611?

He, his son and six others were put off the Discovery in Hudson Bay and never seen again.

What was the name of the Dutch ship Hudson commanded out of Amsterdam in 1609?

The Half Moon carried him up the river that now bears his name.

Francis Drake received his knighthood in 1581 aboard which ship?

His 1577-80 voyage was only the second circumnavigation ever and the first by an English expedition.

Abel Tasman named Tasmania 'Van Diemen's Land' after what?

Anthony van Diemen was governor of the Dutch East Indies; Tasman reached New Zealand weeks later in December 1642.

Which ship carried James Cook on his first voyage of 1768-71?

The voyage reached the east coast of Australia; Cook was killed in Hawaii on his third voyage in 1779.

Who is credited with first using the name 'Australia' for the whole continent?

He found it 'more agreeable to the ear' than Terra Australis.

The Burke and Wills expedition aimed to cross Australia from Melbourne to where?

The 3,250 km trek used imported camels; both leaders died on the return.

Which president commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

The Corps of Discovery set out shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Sacagawea, who helped Lewis and Clark, belonged to which people?

She was in her teens, carrying her infant son, for most of the journey.

Humboldt set an altitude record in 1802 on which Ecuadorian volcano?

His party reached 5,878 metres without reaching the top; the peak is the farthest point from Earth's centre.

What was the local name of the waterfall Livingstone renamed Victoria Falls?

It means 'the smoke that thunders'; he was the first European to see it.

Which newspaper sent Henry Morton Stanley to find Livingstone?

Stanley found him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1871; he later tore the pages of the meeting out of his diary.

Stanley's reputation suffered for helping establish which colony for King Leopold II?

The private colony became notorious for brutal forced labour in the rubber trade.

Which explorer is said to have spoken up to 29 languages and made the Hajj in disguise?

He also published the Kama Sutra in English and was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika.

Which body of water, named for a queen, did Speke reach first among Europeans?

He argued, correctly, that it was the source of the Nile; Burton bitterly disagreed.

Mary Kingsley's 1897 bestseller described her solo journeys in which region?

She travelled through Sierra Leone, Angola, Gabon and Cameroon between 1893 and 1895.

Who led the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, on skis?

He later let his ship Fram freeze into the Arctic ice on purpose, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922.

Robert Peary claimed to reach the North Pole in which year?

Matthew Henson and four Inuit were with him; historians now doubt the party got all the way there.

Peary first met Matthew Henson working as a clerk in what kind of shop?

Henson was 21; he went on to spend two decades in the Arctic with Peary.

On what date did Amundsen's party reach the South Pole?

Scott arrived five weeks later to find the black flag already planted.

Amundsen's 1903-06 expedition was the first to traverse which route, on the sloop Gjøa?

He vanished in 1928 flying to rescue the crew of the airship Italia.

Scott's fatal 1910-13 Antarctic expedition is named after which ship?

His earlier Discovery Expedition of 1901-04 had got him within 850 km of the Pole.

In which sea did Shackleton's ship Endurance sink in November 1915?

The crew camped on the ice, rowed to Elephant Island, then sailed 720 nautical miles to South Georgia.

On what date did Hillary and Tenzing reach the summit of Everest?

News reached London on the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation.

Jacques Cousteau co-invented which underwater breathing apparatus?

The first successful open-circuit scuba set let him shoot some of the first underwater documentaries.

Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki raft sailed from Peru to which islands?

The balsa raft drifted 8,000 km; in 1970 he crossed the Atlantic in a papyrus boat, Ra II.

Nellie Bly circled the world in how many days in 1889-90?

She set out to beat Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg and did so with eight days to spare.

Alexandra David-Néel is best known for a 1924 visit to which forbidden city?

Tibet's capital was closed to foreigners; she entered disguised as a beggar.

Isabella Bird was the first woman elected a fellow of which body?

She rode through the Rockies, Japan, Persia and Korea, often alone, in the late 19th century.

Gagarin's single orbit of Earth in 1961 was aboard which spacecraft?

The flight on 12 April lasted 108 minutes from launch to landing.

Which Dutch navigator was stopped by ice at Novaya Zemlya while seeking a northeast passage?

The sea north of Norway and Russia now carries his name.