The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was, in 1541, the first white man to see the Mississippi, but it was not until June 1673 that two Frenchmen, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, actually explored the river in canoes. They travelled far enough south to prove that it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and could not, therefore, be the hoped-for …

Henry Stanley is usually remembered as the American newspaperman who, on first meeting the Scottish explorer, Livingstone, deep in the African interior, greeted him with ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ Yet Stanley was a distinguished explorer in his own right. In 1874 he returned to Africa to explore the Luabala River which Livingstone believed formed the headwaters of the Nile. He …

Mort Walker — Without question, Mort Walker of Beetle Bailey fame is one of the most popular and most successful cartoonists who ever lifted a pen. He has a golden reputation for being one of the busiest and friendliest people in the business. Mort is the original creator of Hi & Lois and Boner’s Ark and the founder and chairman …

In 1819, Edward Parry, a young navel officer, was given command of two ships, the Hecla and Gripper, with instructions to find a sea route to the Pole. He was defeated by the ice but his ships, nevertheless, were the first to sail north of the Magnetic Pole – then 71°N. 96°W. As they did so Parry was delighted to …

In 1497, Vasco da Gama, a young Portuguese sea captain, was summoned to the court of King Manuel I. The king informed him that, as one of the most notable navigators of his day, he had been chosen to lead an expedition in an attempt to find a sea route from Portugal to the Indies, round the southern tip of …

As early as 1897, the first attempt was made to reach the North Pole by aircraft, when a Swedish explorer and three other set off in a balloon had crashed. By then the North Pole had been crossed by a three-engined Fokker monoplane, the Josephine Ford. It carried Lt. Commander (later Rear-Admiral) R.E. Byrd with Floyd Bennett as pilot. The …

Men began to explore the Arctic as early as 1553, but it was not until 6 April 1909 that the Pole itself was reached. Three and a half centuries of effort and courage ended with an American, Robert E. Peary ‘nailing the Stars and Stripes to the North Pole’. The quest for the South Pole began much later, the first …

The year was 1919. On 14 and 15 June the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight was made by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. Alcock was the pilot, Whitten Brown the navigator. Their aircraft was an adapted Vickers Vimy bomber fitted with two Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines. They took off from St John’s, Newfoundland, and landed, sixteen hours, twenty-seven minutes later, …

Even by the 1830s, central Australia was still a great mystery. Several people had tried to explore the interior but had been defeated by desert, lack of water and hostile natives. One of these was Edward Eyre, who had failed twice. His third attempt also seemed hopeless but finally, after an appalling journey of 2,000 km, Eyre and Wylie, his …

In 1803 the United States purchased from France a huge area known as Louisiana which gave the U.S. twice as much territory as it had previously owned. Much of it was unexplored, however, and President Jefferson ordered Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark to explore this ‘wild’ western area as thoroughly as possible. They set off up the Missouri …