Notable & Famous Explorers Posters and Prints, pg 6/8
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

Hanno the Navigator (c 450 BCE) was a Carthaginian who explored and colonized the west coast of Africa. In the area which is known today as Sierra Leone, Hanno found what was described as “hairy people”. Attempts to capture the men failed, but three of the women were taken and ultimately killed because they were so unmanageable. The Greek word “Gorillai” (“tribe of hairy women”) provided the species name.

• Seafaring Lore and Legend : A Miscellany of Maritime Myth, Superstition, Fable, and Fact

Sven Anders Hedin
b. 2-19-1865; Stockholm, Sweden
d. 11-26-1952

Sven Anders Hedin was a Swedish explorer, geographer and geopolitician who lead several expeditions to the Himalayas and central Asia, finding the ruins of the ancient Chinese garrison town of Loulan (Lou-lan) in the Taklamakan desert.

• My Life as an Explorer by Sven Hedin

Matthew Henson Peary's Companion on His Attempt on the North Pole

Matthew Henson
b. 8-8-1866; Maryland
d. 3-9-1955

In April 1909, Matthew Henson and Lt. Robert Peary became the first people to reach the North Pole. Henson was first hired by Peary in 1887 as a servant on an expedition. He eventually rose to the rank of field assistant. Four years later, in 1891, Henson and Peary set out on the first of several trips to the cold, forbidding ice of the Artic. On their sixth and final trip, they finally made it to the North Pole. Following their triumph, Peary was made an admiral and received worldwide acclaim, while Henson was virtually ignored. Six years later, Henson was working as an attendant in a parking garage. It was only in 1954, a year before he died, that he was honored by President Dwight Eisenhower in a White House ceremony. Matthew Henson is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

• more Great Black Innovators posters
• Did you know that Matthew Henson's great-grand uncle was Josiah Henson- a significant figure in the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War?
• Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson

Prince Henry the Navigator
b. 3-4-1394; Portugal
d. 11-13-1460

Prince Henry the Navigator, a younger son of Portugese King John I, acquired his moniker because of his insistance that sea captains keep careful and complete records of voyages, thus laying the foundations for the Portugese Empire and an example of early adaptation of scientific inquiry. He also began what was to become the University of Lisbon.

• Prince Henry the Navigator: A Life

Father Louis Hennepin
b. 5-12-1626; Belgium
d. c. 1705; Rome

Louis Hennepin, a Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Recollect order, explored the wester part of New France in interior of North America with René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. There are many places named after Hennipen in the midwest area of the United States.

Hennepin reported Niagara Falls to the world, and Hannibal, Missouri historians claim that he was the first European to step foot in what is today Hannibal.

• Discovery and exploration of the Mississippi valley: with the original narratives of Marquette, Allouez, Membré, Hennepin, and Anastase Douay.

Thor Heyerdahl
b. 10-6-1914; Norway
d. 4-18-2002; Italy

Thor Heyerdahl, best remembered for his 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition in which he sailed 4,300 miles by balsa wood and bamboo raft from Peru, South America to the Polynesian Tuamotu Islands, was an ethnographer with a background in zoology and geography.

• Kon-Tiki

Henry Hudson
b. 9-12-1570; England
d. 1611; Hudson Bay, Canada

Henry Hudson sailed further north than any previous explorer. He was set adrift in the bay that bears his name by mutineers.

• North American Continent poster
• Hudson River poster
• Lower Manhattan Culture Map poster

Alexander von Humboldt
b. 9-14-1769; Berlin
d. 5-6-1858

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist and explorer whose work on botanical geography is the foundation to the field of biogeography. Humboldt is considered a forerunner in the field of ecology.

• Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See

Louis Joliet
bap. 9-21-1645; Quebec, New France
d. c. 1700

French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet (or Jolliet), along with missionary priest Pere Jacques Marquette, were the first Europeans to map the Mississippi River. Joliet, who showed early academic promise in mathematics, music and map making, is one of the first people of European descent born in North America to be remembered for significant discoveries.

FYI - Joliet was a coureur des bois, or runner of the woods, a trader doing business with Native Americans without persmission of the authorites in Montreal. The second generation of French traders were called voyageurs (travellers) and they were licensed to work with Montreal merchants in order to manipulate the supply of furs and thus the price.

• Louis Jolliet

Mary Kingsley
b. 10-13-1862; England
d. 6-3-1900; South Africa

In 1893 Mary Kingsley broke free from taking care of her bedridden mother and the accompanying handyman, nursemaid and servant duties, to travel West Africa, enduring the heat and hardships in her high-necked blouse, long skirt, and Victorian boots. She wrote of her travel adventures that could not have been predicted from her humble, self educated, beginnings.

• Uncommon Traveler: Mary Kingsley in Africa

Leonid Kulik
b. 8-19-1883; Estonia
d. 4-12-1942; Nazi prison camp

Leonid Kulik, a Russian mineralogist, lead the first expeditions investigating the Tunguska event, the largest impact event in recorded history (6-30-1908).

• Space Phenomenon posters
• Meteorite Hunter: The Search for Siberian Meteorite Craters

Alexander Gordon Laing
b. 12-27-1793; Scotland
d. 9-26-1826; murdered near Timbuktu

Alexander Gordon Laing was a Scottish explorer and the first European to reach the fabled trading outpost of Timbuktu.

• Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko, and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa

Dr. David Livingstone
b. 3-19-1813; Scotland
d. 5-1-1873, Zambia

David Livingstone was a medical missionary to Africa.

Mr. Henry Morton Stanley (née John Rowland)
b. 1-28-1841; Wales
d. 5-10-1904;London

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” (11-10-1871)

• Africa posters
• Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

Lewis and Clark, the Corps of Discovery

• more Lewis & Clark posters
• more map posters

Ferdinand Magellan
b. c. Spring 1480; Portugal
d. 4-27-1521; Phillipines

Ferdinand Magellan was the leader of the first expedition to sail completely around the world. ...

Jacques Marquette
b. 6-10-1637; France
d. 5-18-1675; near present day Ludington, Michigan

Jacques Marquette, known as Pere Marquette, was a Jesuit missionary to the French colony of Quebec in present day Canada. He founded the first European settlement in Michigan at Sault Ste. Marie, and later St. Ignace (1671) which is now the northern end of the Straits of Mackinaw bridge.

In 1673 Pere Marquette with French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet were the first non-Native Americans to see and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River.

Henri Mouhot
b. 5-15-1826; France
d. 11-10-1861, Laos

Henri Mouhot is best known for his popularization of the ruins of Angkor, the region of Cambodia serving as the seat of the Khmer empire. He was married to the daughter of English explorer Mungo Park.