25 Interesting Facts About Explorers And Exploration You Might Not Know
At the core, everyone is an explorer.
We are all blessed with a certain level of curiosity and that is all that it really takes. Why did people climb
Mount Everest? Why did they sail across the oceans? In many ways it was just because they could. Of course, fame and fortune potentially played a role as well, but whatever the reason, exploration has played a critical role in humanity's development
. In the past we explored our continents, then we set off across oceans and explored other continents.
Today, we explore the bottoms of the oceans and the heavens above. There is always some new frontier, and although the object of our exploration has changed, we are still people and we still do things for largely the same reason
...curiosity. So, lets go back in time and take a look at some of the great explorers of the past. They made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of silly things, but some of the stories are pretty incredible. Although the age of exploration was wrought with warfare, backstabbing and gold (and of course pirates!) things aren't much different today. These are 25 Interesting
Facts About
Explorers And
Exploration You
Might Not Know!
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In 1503
Columbus got stranded in
Jamaica while on his way to the new world.
Knowing that a lunar eclipse was near, he told the locals that if they didn't take care of his crew the moon would disappear.
Zheng He was a
Chinese admiral, diplomat, and explorer who rose to great prominence during the 1300s in spite of being castrated and enslaved earlier in his life
The famous
British explorer
David Livingstone once had all his supplies stolen while he was in
Africa. In order to get food from the natives he had to eat his meals in a roped off enclosure which served as entertainment for the locals
In 1951, during the
Explorer's Club annual dinner, a
250,000 year old piece of wooly mammoth meat was served
In
1911, British explorer
George Murray Levick observed necrophilia in penguins around
Antarctica. His findings weren't published until
2012 because they were deemed too indecent at the time
Much to their surprise, the first pilgrims at
Plymouth Colony were greeted by a
Native American in
English (his name was
Samoset and he had begun to learn English from fisherman along the coast)
When
James Cook first arrived in
Hawaii the locals thought he was a god. When he came back, however, his boats had been battered by a storm, which apparently offended the natives. They subsequently killed him and ate him.
Lawrence Oates, an
Antarctic explorer, got gangrene and frostbite during an expedition. Knowing that his mates' lives would be in danger, he walked out into the cold, never to return.
Admiralty Island in
Alaska is half the size of
Yellowstone Park but with twice the number of grizzly bears.
Early Russian explorers named the island
Ostrov Kutsnoi, which translates to "fear
island".
Ibn Fadlan, an
Arab explorer, once witnessed a
Norse funeral rite where a
Viking slave girl had sex with all the warriors of the tribe. She was then sacrificed to serve their fallen chief in the next life.
And more...
Music:
Artifact -
The Dark Contenent by
Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a
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Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index
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Artist: http://incompetech.com/