The Great Explorers of the World (A List of Surprising Names)

 

334-323 BC  Alexander the Great (Macedonia) conquers and explores Syria, Palestine, Persia and part of Northern India

58-52 BC  Caius Julius Caesar (Rome) conquers and explores almost all of Western Europe and invades Britain.

c. 1000 AD     Eric the Red (Norway) explores and colonizes the SW coast of Greenland

c. 1271      Marco Polo (Venice) travels to Central Asia, India China and the Malay Archipelago

1487-1488      Bartolomeu Dias (Portugal) explores the beaches of Algoa and Mosel in South Africa, notices and gives the name of the Cape of Storms to the coast that will later be called the Cape of Good Hope

1492-1504  Christopher Columbus (Italy) explores America and establishes several colonies following 4 voyages across the Atlantic.

1498     Vasco da Gama (Portugal) sails around the Cape of Good Hope to Malindi on the East coast of Africa and then crosses the Indian Ocean to Calcutta (India) 

1499     Amerigo Vespucci (Italy) sails through the Caribbean Sea along the coast of South America. German geographer Martin Waldseemuler suggests that the New World be called America.

1519-1522     Fernando Magellan (Portugal) explores the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, sails south, passes through the strait that will bear his name, and crosses the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Islands, where he will be killed by the aborigines. After his death, the captain of the Victoria, Juan Sebastian del Cano, continues the journey to the Cape of Good Hope and reaches Spain, making the first trip around the world. 

1519-1536  Hernan Cortes (Spain) explores the eastern coast of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula, conquers Mexico and explores the coast of California.

1524-26     Francesco Pizarro (Spain) explores the west coast of South Africa and conquers Peru.

1540-46      Pedro de Valdivia (Spain) explores Chile

1577-1580      Sir Francis Drake (England) makes the second trip around the Earth.

1594-1617      Sir Walter Raleigh (England) explores Guiana, Trinidad and the Orinoco River.

1728 and 1741      Vitus Jonassen Bering (Denmark, Russia) explores the Bering Sea and the strait of the same name.

1768-1771      James Cook (England) explores and maps the coast of New Zealand, finalizes the map of the islands and archipelagos of the world, formulates the theory that there must be a vast unexplored continent in the southern hemisphere, explores the coasts of Australia and Hawaii.

1768-1771     James Bruce (Scotland) reaches the headwaters of the Blue Nile, then follows the course of the river to its confluence with the White Nile.

1820 Nathaniel Palmer (USA) is the first man to reach Antarctica.

1840-1873      David Livingstone (England) crosses South Africa, explores Lake Ngami, discovers the Zambezi River, Victoria Falls.

1860-1861      Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills (Ireland) are the first Europeans to cross Australia from South to North.

1874-75      Verney Lovett Cameron (England) is the first European to cross equatorial Africa from East to West.

1897-1926     Roald Amundsen (Norway) is the first to reach the South Pole and cross the North Pole with the airship Norge.

1908     Robert Edwin Peary (USA) is the first to reach the North Pole.

1958 Sir Edmund Hillary (New Zealand) and Sir Vivian Fuchs (England) make the first crossing of Antarctica on foot.

1960 Jacques Piccard (Belgium, Switzerland) and Don Walsh (USA) descend with the Trieste bathyscaphe into the Mariana Trench (10,912 m), the deepest part of the planetary Ocean

1969  Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin (USA) are the first earthlings to reach the moon