How to Be an Explorer of the World How to Be an Explorer of the World Cover Art

When Europeans first began sailing beyond the Atlantic Ocean, they were searching for new routes to China and the East, but what they found was more than than they imagined: the New World.

Larn more nigh some of the history's most famous explorers and their revolutionary discoveries:

Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Photo: Leemage/UIG via Getty Images

Marco Polo was a Venetian explorer known for the volume The Travels of Marco Polo, which describes his voyage to and experiences in Asia. Polo traveled extensively with his family unit, journey from Europe to Asia from 1271 to 1295, remaining in China for 17 of those years. As the years wore on, Polo rose through the ranks, serving every bit governor of a Chinese metropolis. Later, Kublai Khan appointed him every bit an official of the Privy Quango. At i bespeak, he was the tax inspector in the city of Yanzhou.

Around 1292, he left China, acting as consort along the way to a Mongol princess who was beingness sent to Persia. In the centuries since his expiry, Polo has received the recognition that failed to come his way during his lifetime. So much of what he claimed to have seen has been verified by researchers, academics and other explorers. Even if his accounts came from other travelers he met along the style, Polo'south story has inspired countless other adventurers to set off and run across the world.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Photo: DeAgostini/Getty Images

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator. Columbus start went to bounding main as a teenager, participating in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. I such voyage, to the island of Khios, in mod-day Greece, brought him the closest he would always come to Asia.

In 1492, he sailed across the Atlantic Sea from Espana in the Santa Maria, with the Pinta and the Niña ships alongside, hoping to find a new road to Republic of india.

Between 1492 and 1504, he made a total of iv voyages to the Caribbean and South America and has been credited – and blamed – for opening upwardly the Americas to European colonization. Columbus probably died of astringent arthritis following an infection on May 20, 1506, still believing he had discovered a shorter road to Asia.

READ MORE: Was Christopher Columbus a Hero or Villain?

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci

Photo: Austrian National Library

America was named later on Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator and explorer who played a prominent part in exploring the New World.

On May 10, 1497, Vespucci embarked on his first voyage, departing from Cadiz with a armada of Spanish ships. In May 1499, sailing under the Castilian flag, Vespucci embarked on his side by side trek, every bit a navigator under the command of Alonzo de Ojeda. Crossing the equator, they traveled to the coast of what is now Guyana, where it is believed that Vespucci left Ojeda and went on to explore the declension of Brazil. During this journeying, Vespucci is said to have discovered the Amazon River and Greatcoat St. Augustine.

On his third and most successful voyage, he discovered present-day Rio de Janeiro and Rio de la Plata. Believing he had discovered a new continent, he called South America the New World. In 1507, America was named after him. He died of malaria in Seville, Kingdom of spain, on February 22, 1512.

John Cabot

John Cabot

Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

John Cabot was a Venetian explorer and navigator known for his 1497 voyage to North America, where he made a British claim to land in Canada, mistaking it for Asia. The precise location of Cabot's landing is subject to controversy. Some historians believe that Cabot landed at Greatcoat Breton Isle or mainland Nova Scotia. Others believe he may have landed at Newfoundland, Labrador or even Maine.

Afterwards setting canvass in May 1498 for a return voyage to North America, he disappeared and Cabot's terminal days remain a mystery. Information technology is believed Cabot died one-time in 1499 or 1500, but his fate remains a mystery. In February 1498, Cabot was given permission to make a new voyage to North America; in May of that yr, he departed from Bristol, England, with five ships and a crew of 300 men. En route, one ship became disabled and sailed to Ireland, while the other 4 ships continued on. From this signal, there is just speculation as to the fate of the voyage and Cabot.

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan

Photograph: DeAgostini/Getty Images

While in the service of Spain, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan led the commencement European voyage of discovery to circumnavigate the globe. As a male child, Magellan studied mapmaking and navigation. In 1505, when Magellan was in his mid-20s, he joined a Portuguese fleet that was sailing to East Africa. By 1509, he found himself at the Boxing of Diu, in which the Portuguese destroyed Egyptian ships in the Arabian Sea. Two years later, he explored Malacca, located in nowadays-day Malaysia, and participated in the conquest of Malacca'southward port.

In 1519, with the support of Holy Roman Emperor Charles 5, Magellan set out to find a better route to the Spice Islands. In March 1521, Magellan's fleet reached Homonhom Island on the border of the Philippines with less than 150 of the 270 men who started the expedition. Magellan traded with Rajah Humabon, the island king, and a bond was quickly formed. The Spanish coiffure soon became involved in a war between Humabon and another rival leader and Magellan was killed in battle on April 27, 1521.

Hernán Cortés

Hernan Cortes

Photo: Fine Fine art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Hernán Cortés was a Spanish conquistador who explored Central America, overthrew Montezuma and his vast Aztec empire and won Mexico for the crown of Spain. He commencement set sail to the New World at the age of xix. Cortés afterward joined an expedition to Cuba. In 1518, he set up off to explore Mexico.

Cortés became allies with some of the Indigenous peoples he encountered in Mexico, but with others, he used deadly force to conquer Mexico. He fought Tlaxacan and Cholula warriors and then gear up his sights on taking over the Aztec empire. In their bloody battles for domination over the Aztecs, Cortés and his men are estimated to have killed as many as 100,000 Indigenous peoples. King Charles I of Spain (as well known as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) appointed him the governor of New Spain in 1522.

Sir Francis Drake

Francis Drake

Photo: A+East Networks

English admiral Sir Francis Drake was the 2d person to circumnavigated the earth and was the most renowned seaman of the Elizabethan era.

In 1577, Drake was chosen as the leader of an expedition intended to pass around Southward America, through the Strait of Magellan, and explore the declension that lay beyond. Drake successfully completed the journey and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I upon his triumphant return in 1580. In 1588, Drake saw action in the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, though he died in 1596 from dysentery after undertaking an unsuccessful raiding mission.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Walter Raleigh

Photo: Getty Images

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English language explorer, soldier and writer. At age 17, he fought with the French Huguenots and later studied at Oxford. He became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I later serving in her army in Ireland. He was knighted in 1585, and inside ii years became Captain of the Queen's Guard.

An early supporter of colonizing North America, Raleigh sought to constitute a colony, but the queen forbid him to leave her service. Between 1585 and 1588, he invested in a number of expeditions across the Atlantic, attempting to constitute a colony most Roanoke, on the coast of what is now N Carolina, and proper noun it "Virginia" in honor of the virgin queen, Elizabeth. Accused of treason by Rex James I, Raleigh was imprisoned and eventually put to expiry.

James Cook

James Cook

Photo: Stock Montage/Stock Montage/Getty Images

James Cook was a naval captain, navigator and explorer. After serving as an apprentice, Cook eventually joined the British Navy and, at age 29, was promoted to ship's master. During the Seven Years War (1756-1763), he commanded a captured ship for the Royal Navy. In 1768, he took command of the first scientific trek to the Pacific.

In 1770, on his ship the HMB Attempt, Cook charted New Zealand and the Great Barrier Reef of Commonwealth of australia. This area has since been credited as one of the globe's near dangerous areas to navigate. He afterwards disproved the existence of Terra Australis, a fabled southern continent. Melt's voyages helped guide generations of explorers and provided the starting time accurate map of the Pacific.

Francisco Pizarro

Francisco Pizarro

Photo: Fine Fine art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

In 1513, Castilian explorer and conquistador Francisco Pizarro joined Vasco Núñez de Balboa in his march to the "South Sea," across the Isthmus of Panama. During their journey, Balboa and Pizarro discovered what is now known as the Pacific Ocean, although Balboa allegedly spied it first, and was therefore credited with the ocean's first European discovery.

In 1528, Pizarro went back to Kingdom of spain and managed to procure a committee from Emperor Charles 5. Pizarro was to conquer the southern territory and plant a new Spanish province in that location. In 1532, accompanied by his brothers, Pizarro overthrew the Inca leader Atahualpa and conquered Republic of peru. Three years later, he founded the new upper-case letter urban center of Lima. Over time, tensions increasingly built upwards betwixt the conquistadors who had originally conquered Peru and those who arrived later to stake some claim in the new Spanish province. This disharmonize eventually led to Pizarro's assassination in 1541.

Share this post