Navigate This Quiz on Famous Explorers

In May 1497, Italian navigator John Cabot sailed west from Bristol, England, to establish a western route to Asia in the name of King Henry VII. When Cabot reached what is now Newfoundland, Canada, he claimed the land — dubbed “New Found Launde” — for England, and reported that he had reached the northeast coast of Asia.

A key figure during what historians call the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, Roald Amundsen sailed his ship through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in 1903, becoming the first captain to do so. Years later, on December 14, 1911, Amundsen beat British explorer Robert Falcon Scott in a race to the South Pole, planting Norway’s flag in the Antarctic ice.

A descendant of Mexican Americans, Ynes Mexia is one of the most successful botanists of all time. She began her explorations in 1925, journeying to remote locations in South and Central America and Alaska. She often traveled alone, and collected around 150,000 botanical specimens throughout her career. Mexia discovered more than 500 new species of plants, many of which were named after her.

In 1520, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his small fleet became the first European explorers to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. Magellan didn’t quite know where he was, but named the body of water “Pacific” (from the Latin word “pacificus,” meaning “tranquil”) because the waters were calm and peaceful. Magellan was reportedly so happy to see the Pacific after a long and arduous journey that he wept with joy.

When Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic in 1932, the trip had to be carefully planned. To travel light, the only food she packed was a thermos of soup and tomato juice. To stay alert for the 15-hour flight, she also packed smelling salts, though the cross-continental journey proved to be exciting enough that she might not have needed them.

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama accomplished his goal of connecting western Europe to Asia by sea when he reached India in 1498 by sailing around the southern tip of Africa. His crew sailed south from Portugal along the western coast of Africa in 1497, curled around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of modern-day South Africa, and headed north, stopping in modern-day Mozambique, Kenya, and at several islands before landing in India.

On May 4, 1975, an avalanche barreled down the side of Everest toward Junko Tabei’s camp. Thankfully, there were no casualties, and the team's sherpas were able to safely get everyone out of the snow. Just 12 days later, despite sustaining some injuries from the avalanche, Tabei became the first woman to summit Mount Everest. The accomplished mountaineer was also the first woman to reach all Seven Summits.

David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary, explorer, and anti-slavery advocate. He embarked upon several missions into Africa, venturing farther into the interior than previous European explorers. While trying to find the source of the Nile River, he became ill in what is now northern Zambia. After his death in 1873, Livingstone’s heart was removed and buried in African soil.

Before lending his name to the Americas, Italian merchant and explorer Amerigo Vespucci worked his way up through a number of jobs, some with the powerful Medici family in Florence. Vespucci worked as a banker for the Medicis in 1482, and later as supervisor for the family’s ship-outfitting organization. When Vespucci led a voyage to the New World in 1501, he was convinced that what he landed on was an entirely new continent. German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller produced a world map in 1507 partially based on Vespucci’s travels, and named the new continent after him.

Ernest Shackleton and his crew were stranded for 20 months in Antarctica after their ship became trapped in ice during a voyage to reach the South Pole. Abandoning their ship, “Endurance,” 27 men and 69 dogs survived by camping on floating ice until it broke apart in the spring of 1916. Their nearly two-year journey finally ended on August 30, 1916, when they were rescued.

In 2012, James Cameron codesigned “Deepsea Challenger,” a state-of-the-art submarine built to explore the Mariana Trench, the world’s deepest oceanic recess. He test drove the one-person submersible, setting a record by traveling to a depth of five miles, which he later beat by traveling seven miles into the depths of the ocean. His documentary “Deepsea Challenge 3D” chronicles his underwater explorations.

On April 6, 1909, American explorers Matthew Henson and Robert Peary, along with their Inuit assistants, reached the North Pole. They are widely accepted as the first group to do so. Henson was a Black American explorer whose love for adventure led to a long career spent in Greenland and the Arctic. As co-leader of the group, Henson was the first member of the expedition to stand on the official pole.

While serving as a nurse’s aid during World War I in Toronto, Canada, Amelia Earhart had the opportunity to see her first flying exhibition. After taking great interest in the show, she took her first flight in 1920 with famous World War I pilot Frank Hawk. She was officially hooked and started flying lessons in January 1921.

When Phoenician explorers began their travels in the 12th century BCE, they tried to stay within sight of land to avoid becoming lost at sea. But if they did venture out farther, they would use the “Phoenician Star” — now known as Polaris, or the North Star — to guide them along the Mediterranean. The North Star is useful for navigation because it is located almost exactly over the celestial North Pole, and it remains in the same place in the sky from dusk until dawn, without rising or setting.

Ever the determined journalist, Nellie Bly challenged herself to beat the fictional record set in the novel “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Bly began her trip on November 14, 1889, when she boarded a steamboat traveling from New Jersey to England. From there, she navigated her way through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, ultimately crossing the Pacific Ocean for her final train ride home. Bly's trip took 72 days.

On June 18, 1983, young girls were inspired by Sally Ride as she made history and became the first American woman in space. Dr. Ride was one of five crew members on the space shuttle Challenger, which was launched on a one-week mission to work on communication satellites and perform experiments. The voyage also made her the youngest American to go to space at the time.

Meriwether Lewis is famous for his expeditions with his former army commander, William Clark, but prior to that, he rose to the rank of captain in the army, and then was hired as secretary to President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson sent Lewis to Philadelphia to study medicine, botany, and celestial navigation, and in 1802, the President put Lewis in command of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition to map the newly acquired western United States.

The phrase "the eagle has landed” often refers to a successful arrival or completion of a mission. The idiom first took flight in 1969 during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landed their lunar module, the Eagle, on the surface of the moon, prompting Armstrong to say those famous four words.

The Silk Road, a network of ancient trade routes between Asia and western Europe, dates back to Chinese diplomat Zhang Qian’s expedition in 138 BCE. But it was over a thousand years later that Marco Polo famously documented the historic route. Beginning in 1271, the Venetian merchant and explorer traveled the Silk Road for 24 years, and wrote about the region’s customs, people, and nature as he traveled.

Charles Darwin set out on his first journey in 1831 at the age of 22. Darwin served as the HMS Beagle's naturalist, exploring remote coastal areas of South America and nearby islands — most famously, the Galápagos Islands, a small volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. He carefully studied the animals, plants, and geology of the region, which eventually informed his theory of evolution.