Notable & Famous Explorers Posters and Prints, pg 7/8
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

Fridtjof Nansen
b. 10-10-1861; Store Froen, Norway
d. 5-13-1930

Fridtjof Nansen was a Norwegian polar explorer, zoologist and diplomat who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work as a League of Nations High Commissioner. The ‘Nansen bottle’ is still used today to collect deep water samples and the UNHRC presents the “Nansen Refuge Award” yearly.

FYI ~ Nansen's first wife was Eva Sars, noted as a mezzosoprano and pioneer in women's skiing.

• Farthest North: The Exploration of the Fram 1893-1896
• peace posters

Naddod or Naddoddr, a Viking explorer, is credited with the discovery of Iceland.
b. c. 825; Norway

• A History of the Vikings

The Odyssey, Homer's epic poem with Odysseus (Ulysses), the main hero, have become synomous with voyages of discovery.

Did you know the snowdrop may have been the same plant as 'moly' which was the antidote to Cerce's poison?

• The Odyssey by Homer, audio CD

Alonso de Ojeda
b. c. 1465; Spain
d. c. 1515; Santo Domingo, island of Hispaniola (the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas and the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World).

Alonso de Ojeda was a Spanish explorer with the second Columbus voyage in 1493. He sailed again in 1499 with his own expedition, sighting a bay he called Venezuela (little Venice); he was accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci who was able to establish that Columbus had not reached Asia.

• Voyages and discoveries of the companions of Columbus by Washington Irving

Mungo Park
b. 9-11-1771; Selkirkshire, Scotland
d. 1806; Bussa, Nigeria, Africa

Mungo Park, Scottish explorer credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River, was also a surgeon and natural scientist.

• The Journals of Mungo Park at Project Gutenberg

Commander Robert Peary
b. 5-6-1856; Cresson, Pennsylvania
d. 2-20-1920; Washington, DC

Robert Peary, whose claim to have been the first person to reach the North Pole, 4-6-1909 has been rejected, was the first to use native Inuit skills to survive the polar conditions.

Matthew Henson was a member of Peary's expeditions beginning in 1887 and was on the 1909 trip.

FYI - The ‘first confirmed surface’ polar expedition wasn't until 1968.

• igloo poster

• Exploring the North Pole: The Story of Robert Edwin Peary and Matthew Henson

Zebulon Pike
b. 1-5-1779; Lamberton, NJ
d. 4-27-1813; on military duty in the War of 1812

Zebulon Pike, namesake of Pikes Peak, was a soldier and explorer of the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase, 1805-1806. His journal descriptions were instrumental in the development of the Santa Fe Trail.

FYI Pike's only child, Clarissa, married the son of William Henry Harrison.

Martin Alonso Pinzon
b. c. 1441; Huelva, Andalusia, Spain
d. March, 1493; Palos de la Frontera, Spain

Martin Alonso Pinzon, a Spanish navigator, explorer, and member of a Spanish ship-owning family, sailed with Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World in 1492, as captain of the Pinta. His brother, Francisco Pinzón, was pilot on the Niña.

Francisco Pizarro
b. c. 1475, Trujillo, Crown of Castile, Spain
d. 6-26-1541; Lima, New Castile, (Peru)(assassinated)

Francisco Pizarro was a Spanish conquistador – a conqueror in search of gold and glory in the New World. ...

• South America posters

Marco Polo
b. c. 1254; Venice, Italy
d. 1-8-1324; Venice

Marco Polo and his father Maffeo and uncle Nicolo were Venetian merchants who traveled to Asia. It was Marco Polo's stories that were published as Il Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo) that inspired men like Christopher Columbus.

• China posters

Juan Ponce de Leon, Giclee Print

Juan Ponce de León
b. c. 1460; San Servas, Spain
d. July, 1521; Havana, Cuba

Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León was on the second voyage of Christopher Columbus and became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish Crown. He is notable in Florida history as the first known European exploration (1513) and calling the land “La Florida” and the legend of the Fountain of Youth.

• Florida posters

John Wesley Powell
b. 3-24-1834; Mount Morris, NY
d. 9-23-1902; Pennsylvania

John Wesley Powell is best remembered for his 1869 three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, the first passage of European Americans through the Grand Canyon.

Powell was also the second director of the US Geological Survey (1881–1894) and proposed policies for water management in the development of the arid West, such as state boundaries based on watershed areas (to avoid squabbles).

• Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell, Pioneers of Conservation

Fernandes de Quiros
b. c. 1565; Évora, Portugal
d. c. 1614; Panama

Fernandes de Quiros was a Portugese explorer in service to Spain. He made several voyages and believed he had located, and claimed for Spain, the “great south land,” naming it Terra Australis after the idea of Aristotle. De Qioros claims lead to sectarian tensions between Australian Catholics and Protestants in the 19th and 20th centuries.

• Pacific adventure: The story of the pilot Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, his passage April 1595-February 1596 by Margaret Whiting Spilhaus

Sir Walter Raleigh
b. c 1554; London, England
d. 10-29-1618; beheaded at Whitehall, ordered by James I

Sir Walter Raleigh, English soldier, poet and adventurer, established the first English colony of Roanoke, 6-4-1584, in present day state of North Carolina. The colony failed with the fate of the colonists never known.

One of the legends surrounding Raleigh is his throwing a fine cape over the muddy ground so Queen Elizabeth I would not dirty her shoes or dress.

Raleigh's half brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, also an explorer, was lost at sea in 1583.

• Sir Walter Raleigh: Being a True and Vivid Account of the Life and Times of the Explorer, Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Courtier--The Controversial Hero of the Elizabethan Age

Hormuzd Rassam
b. 1826; Mosul, Iraq, then the Ottoman Empire
d. 9-16-1910; England

Hormuzd Rassam, traveler and Assyriologist, made a number of discoveries which included the clay tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest-known example of written literature.

• The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh

James Clark Ross
b. 4-15-1800; London, England
d. 4-3-1862; England

James Clark Ross, British naval officer and explorer, went to the Arctic and North Pole with his uncles Sir John Ross and Sir William Parry. Later Ross led his own expedition to Antarctica where he identified the landforms known today as the Ross Sea, the Ross Ice Shelf and Ross Island. His last voyage was in a fruitless search for Arctic explorer John Franklin in 1848.

• Polar Pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross