Adventurous Facts About The Greatest Explorers In History
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Famous as the immortal creed of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, many people don’t realize British explorer James Cook actually wrote those words first (or a version of them, at least). The motto has resonated through the centuries because it speaks to the force driving all humans to discovery. Famous explorers all had their own motives—scientific curiosity, religious zeal, personal greed—but their contributions helped connect the entire world. Here are 42 adventurous facts about some of the most remarkable explorers the world has ever seen.
Explorers Facts
1. Flat Earth Theory
Let’s start with perhaps the most famous explorer of all time: Christopher Columbus. Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus was not trying to prove the earth was round. Everyone already knew that.
Rather, he hoped to find a western passage which would make trade between Europe and Asia easier.
2. Rejected
Columbus was famously backed by Spain in his “discovery” of the New World; Columbus’s success would make Spain the most powerful kingdom of Europe for centuries after.
England, Portugal, and France must have been kicking themselves, though: all three nations turned Columbus away before he sought funding from the Spaniards.
3. Geography Lessons
In fairness to those other three countries, based on the evidence they had, they were right to not invest in Columbus. Spain likely wouldn't have either, had the king and queen listened to their top advisors.
Columbus had severely miscalculated the circumference of the earth—a fact obvious to just about every expert at the time—and likely would have perished had he not stumbled across the Americas.
