Great Explorerz

1.James Cook – The greatest ocean explorer ever and the prototype of the scientific explorer. His three voyages of discovery, the first starting in 1769, explored the Pacific Ocean. Covering one-third of the earth’s surface, it was an area that with the exception of a few trade routes was largely unknown to Europeans. Cook’s methodical explorations, along with his courage and ability to motivate men incredibly far from home, made him probably the most capable explorer of all time.
Travel in his footsteps: Hawaii, Tonga, Queensland, Indonesia
2.Christopher Columbus – Love him or hate him, his persistence changed the world forever. Columbus persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella, fresh from a decisive victory over the Moors, to establish Spanish ascendancy and equality with Portugal by taking a shortcut west to reach the East’s fabled riches. Even though the Vikings, and possibly the Chinese –or even the Phoenicians – beat him to America by hundreds of years. Columbus’s voyages were the ones that took.
Travel in his footsteps: Cuba, the Bahamas
3.Admiral Zheng – Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese Admiral Zheng He, under orders of the Ming Emperor, led seven expeditions into the Indian Ocean, visiting 30 nations in Asia and Africa and sailing 35,000 miles total. His great fleet of junks, huge ships that were easily bigger than any European vessel, introduced the Chinese civilization to Indians, Arabs and Africans. (Some accounts claim that Zheng’s largest ships were 600 feet long. A more plausible length would have been 400 feet – an astounding measurement given the era.). Political intrigue at home stopped the expeditions after 1433. The Chinese, had they continued Zheng’s voyages of discovery, may well have found their way round Africa and into the Atlantic.
Travel in his footsteps: India, Sri Lanka, Yemen, East Africa
4.Marco Polo – This medieval traveler’s story of his journey across Asia into China doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny. He never mentions the Great Wall or foot binding, two obvious and important aspects of Chinese civilization, and a host of other details read suspiciously like contemporary accounts from the Persians. "Nevertheless," as Eleanor Roosevelt once said when somebody insulted Franklin, Polo’s accounts, however tainted, planted seeds of speculation in Europe and helped spark that continent’s great age of discovery. Had Polo not lived, Europe might have delayed her explorations, with untold consequences for the course of history after the 15th century.
(The Chinese had their own Marco Polo, a Buddhist monk by the name of Xuanzang, who crossed the Himalayas into India in 639 A.D. and explored the ancient homeland of Buddhism. Xuanzang returned six years later, laden with Buddhist artifacts and stories of the great subcontinent, acquainting the Chinese in the first substantial way with their great southwestern neighbor.)
Travel in his footsteps: Turkey, Central Asia, China
5.Ferdinand Magellan – It’s almost impossible for modern people to imagine the bravery of this Portuguese mariner and his sailors. Setting sail from Spain in 1519 with a fleet of five small ships, his expedition, reduced to a single ship at the end, discovered the Philippines for Spain and completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1521. He faced hunger, privation, mutiny and loss along the way, including his own death at the hands of angry Filipinos who resented his efforts to convert them to Christianity. Even today, almost 500 years later with ships that are almost infinitely bigger, faster, safer and more powerful, circumnavigation of the earth is a rarity.
Travel in his footsteps: No vessels, pleasure or commercial, currently circumnavigate the globe, let alone along Magellan’s perilous route around Cape Horn.