Notable & Famous Explorers Posters and Print, pg 3/8
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

Vasco Núñez de Balboa
b. c 1475; Spain
d. 1-21-1519; Panama

Conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa founded the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas in present day Panama in 1510.

Balboa lead the first European expedition known to have reached, or seen, the Pacific Ocean from the New World, crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1513.

• Vasco Nunez de Balboa: Explorer to the Pacific Ocean

Willem Barents
b. c. 1550; The Netherlands
d. 6-20-1597; on the Barents Sea

Willem Barents, Dutch explorer and navigator who searched for a northeast passage, lent his name to the part of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Russia which was formerly known as the Murman Sea in the Middle Ages. Barents died on his third voyage.

• The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595, and 1596)

Heinrich Barth
b. 1-16-1821; Hamburg
d. 11-25-1865; Berlin

Heinrich Barth travelled through Africa and the Near East because he was interested in the history and culture of the peoples, rather than the exploitation of them. Heinrich studied with Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich von Schelling and Jakob Grimm, spoke Arabic, and his work was cited by Charles Darwin.

• Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta
b. 2-24-1304; Tangier, Morocco
d. c. 1368-1377; Morocco, the Black Plague

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, a Berber Sunni Islamic scholar and Qadi (judge), is best known as a traveler and explorer who wrote accounts of his journeys (including Hajj) that covered most of the known Islamic world, from present-day West Africa to Pakistan, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and China, over a period of almost thirty years. Ibn Battuta traveled some 73,000 miles, a distance greater than that of his predecessor and near-contemporary Marco Polo.

• The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century

Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Rabbi whose travels started as a pilgrimage from the Kingdom of Navarre to the Holy Lands in 1165. He recorded his journey emphasizing details of Jewish communities he sought out.

• The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages

Jean de Béthencourt
b. c. 1360; France
d. c. 1425

In 1402 Jean de Béthencourt, a French explorer, led an expedition to the Canary Islands and received the title “King of the Canary Islands”, while judiciously recognizing his patron, King Henry III of Castile, as his overlord.

• Canarian or Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canarians in the Year 1402 by Messire Jean De Bethencourt

Isabella Bird Bishop
b. 10-15-1831; England
d. 10-7-1904; England

Isabella Bird Bishop was a sickly child and spent her entire life struggling with ailments that may have been psychogenic, for when she was doing exactly what she wanted she was almost never ill. Her real desire was to travel and so conducted a life of travel supported by writing about her travels.

• Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs: Volume 1
• more women writers posters

Adriaen Block
b. c. 1567; Amsterdam, The Netherlands
d. 4-27-1627; Amsterdam

Adriaen Block, a Dutch trader and navigator, is known for making four voyages between 1611 and 1614 exploring the coastal and river valley areas between present-day New Jersey and Massachusetts and establishing early trade with the Native Americans.

On his fourth voyage his ship the Tyger was accidentally destroyed by fire. With help from the Lenape tribe, his crew built a 42-foot ship, the Onrust, which allowed them to rendezvous with one of the other expedition ships.

Block's 1614 map notes many features of the mid-Atlantic region for the first time and is the first application of the term New Netherland to the region. Block is considered the first European to enter Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, and to determine that Manhattan and Long Island are islands. He named the narrow tidal strait in the East River of New York City the Hellegat, which has been Anglicized to Hell's Gate, and Block Island, Rhode Island is named after him.

• Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, including a summer in the Upper Karun region and a visit to the Nestorian rayahs: Volume 1
• more women writers posters

Aimé Bonpland
b. 8-22-1773; France
d. 5-4-1858; Argentina

Aime Bonpland was a French army surgeon, explorer, botantist and professor of natural history who collected and classified plants in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins. He was part of a Alexander von Humboldt expedition and imprisoned for ten years in Paraguay as an accused spy. A street in Buenos Aires and a crater on the moon are named for him, as well as many plants and animals.

• Measuring the World: A Novel

Daniel Boone
b. 11-2-1734; Pennsylvania
d. 9-26-1820; Missouri

Daniel Boone, an American pioneer and hunter, who was was one of the first folk heroes of the United States for his exploration and settlement of what is now the U.S. state of Kentucky, an area beyond the western borders of the Thirteen British Colonies. In 1775 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road over an animal migration route and Native American hunting trail through a natural gap in the Appalachian Mountains (named the Cumberland Gap for the Duke of Cumberland in 1750). Boone founded Boonesborough at the end of the trail, the first English speaking settlement in Kentucky. In 1799 Daniel Boone moved his family to Missouri.

• Daniel Boone: His Own Story

Louis Antoine de Bougainville
b. 11-12-1729; Paris
d. 8-31-1811; Paris

Louis Antoine de Bougainville was a French navigator and military commander. He studied law, wrote a treatise on the integral calculus, was involved in the North American French and Indian War (1754–1763) and was the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. His ship also carried the first woman known to circumnavigate, Jeanne Baré, who boarded the ship disquised as a man.

• The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine De Bougainville, 1767-1768

Papaya Tree, Art Print, Michal Boym

Michal Piotr Boym (1612-1659) was a Jesuit priest, scientist, and early explorer, who is notable for his documention of the geography, flora and fauna of China.

• Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848
• more tree posters
• more fruit posters

Saint Brendan the Navigator
b. c. 484; County Kerry, Ireland
d. c. 578; Ireland

Saint Brendan the Navigator was renowned for his semi-legendary quest to the Land of Delight. St. Brendan is the Patron Saint of sailors and mariners.

• Saint Brendan and The Voyage Before Columbus

Jim Bridger
b. 3-17-1804; Richmond, VA
d. 7-17-1881; Kansas City, MO

Mountain man, trapper, scout and guide Jim Bridger explored and worked the Western United States during the 1820s through the mid 1860s.

Richard F. Burton
b. 3-19-1821; England
d. 10-20-1890; Trieste

Richard F. Burton was the first European to see Lake Tanganyika, 1858 with John Hanning Speke.

• The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Richard Burton translation)

Richard E. Byrd
b. 10-25-1888; Winchester, VA
d. 3-11-1957

Richard E. Byrd was a pioneering American polar explorer and aviator acclaimed as the first to fly over the North Pole in 1926. This distinction has proven untrue although at the time it permitted Byrd to become internationally recognized and to raise funds for a South Pole flight, which succeeded. Byrd was also attempting to be the first to solo non-stop across the Atlantic but was beaten by Charles Lindbergh.

• Antarctica posters
• Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard E. Byrd