He was a celebrated soldier, a hero on land and sea. He was responsible for the first ever English colonies in the New World. And he wrote poetry that ranks with some of the finest in early modern England. Yet at the age of 54 Sir Walter Raleigh was executed for treason. What ...read more
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, ...read more
Diego ran headlong through the gunfire toward the boats on the beach. “Are you Captain Drake’s?” he cried. He had to get on board. He had heard there were no slaves in England, and if he joined the English they might take him there. He knew some of their countrymen traded in ...read more
As the satirist Russell Baker once observed, “a fruitcake is forever.” The rock-hard, notoriously unpleasant-tasting treat can last a long, long time. Case in point: The Antarctic Heritage Trust recently discovered a 100-year-old fruit cake on Antarctica’s Cape Adare peninsula. ...read more
The title of “history’s most famous traveler” usually goes to Marco Polo, the great Venetian wayfarer who visited China in the 13th century. For sheer distance covered, however, Polo trails far behind the Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta. Though little known outside the Islamic world, ...read more
The painting depicts a white-breasted bird lying on its back, its delicate beak tipped into the air. Labeled simply “Tree-Creeper, March 1899,” it was found in a paper portfolio left on a bunk in one of two historic huts on Cape Adare, a peninsula on the far east side of ...read more
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca first arrived in the New World in 1528 as the royal treasurer on a Spanish voyage of discovery. When he finally left eight years later as one of the expedition’s sole survivors, he had walked across the American continent, made first contact with dozens ...read more
“Another hard grind in the afternoon and five miles added,” British explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote in his diary. “Our chance still holds good if we can put the work in, but it’s a terribly trying time.” It was mid-January 1912, and the 43-year-old Royal Navy officer was ...read more
On March 21, 1871, Henry Morton Stanley set out from the African port of Bagamoyo on what he hoped would be a career-making adventure. The 30-year-old journalist had arrived on the “Dark Continent” at the behest of the New York Herald newspaper, yet he wasn’t chasing any ordinary ...read more
As England slipped out of sight on August 6, 1914, James Wordie eagerly awaited his next icy challenge. As an experienced Alpine climber, the 25-year-old native of Scotland was used to reaching great heights, but now he sought adventure at the bottom of the world. Part of the ...read more
The pure air that Edward Whymper inhaled atop the summit of the Matterhorn on July 14, 1865, was so rarified that it had never filled the lungs of another person—or so the English mountaineer hoped. The 25-year-old illustrator from London had never even seen a mountain when he ...read more
With his steely blue eyes, manicured beard and trademark Stetson hat, Colonel Percy Fawcett looked like the quintessential swashbuckling adventurer. His resume included a stint as a British artilleryman in Sri Lanka, a tour of duty in World War I and a top-secret gig as a spy in ...read more
1. Cook joined the Royal Navy relatively late in life. Cook worked on a Yorkshire farm in his youth before winning an apprenticeship with a merchant sailing company at age 17. He cut his teeth as a mariner on shipping voyages in the choppy waters of North and Baltic Seas, and ...read more
The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is often credited as being the first person to have circumnavigated the globe, but the reality of his journey is a bit more complicated. Magellan first set sail in September 1519 as part of an epic attempt to find a western route to the ...read more
1. Alexander Selkirk Scottish mariner Alexander Selkirk’s solitary odyssey began in 1704, when he arrived at an island off the coast of Chile along with a group of British privateers. The men had spent the previous year harassing Spanish shipping around South America, but when ...read more
1. The Kingdom of Prester John For more than 500 years, Europeans believed a Christian king ruled over a vast empire somewhere in the wilds of Africa, India or the Far East. The myth first gained popularity in 1165, after the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors received a ...read more
1. Hiram Bingham III: Told the world about Machu Picchu Bingham is credited with becoming the first outsider, in 1911, to visit the ruins of Machu Picchu, the now-famous Inca settlement in the Peruvian Andes that was built in the 15th century and abandoned around the time of the ...read more
1. Percy Fawcett The unforgiving Amazon jungle has claimed the lives of more than one adventurer, but perhaps none so famous as Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 while on the trail of a mythical lost city. One of the most colorful figures of his era, Fawcett had made ...read more
It’s a familiar story, but that doesn’t make it any less remarkable: a forgotten shipwreck, long ago sunk to the bottom of the sea, holding once-edible treasures like honey, olive oil or wine. Just this summer, a Roman ship was discovered off the coast of Italy that held nearly ...read more
1. Magellan’s expedition had a multinational crew. Although it was a Spanish expedition, Magellan’s fleet featured a culturally diverse crew. Spaniards and Portuguese made up the vast majority of the sailors, but the voyage also included mariners from Greece, Sicily, England, ...read more
English seaman Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, with five ships and 164 men on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World and explore the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, Drake’s return to Plymouth marked the first circumnavigation of ...read more
English seaman Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to sail the earth. On December 13, 1577, Drake set out from England with five ships on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World. ...read more
One of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships–the Vittoria–arrives at SanlÚcar de Barrameda in Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Vittoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan SebastiÁn de Elcano, who took charge of the vessel after the murder of ...read more
After traveling three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines. Earlier in the month, his ships had dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu, and Magellan met with ...read more