Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies.
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he also discovered the Strait of Magellan, allowing his fleet to pass from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean and perform the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific. Magellan was killed in battle in the Philippines and his crew, commanded by the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522 achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.
James Cook
Captain James Cook (7 November 1728[a] – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand and was the first known European to visit the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.
Zheng He
Zheng He (also romanized Cheng Ho; 1371–1433/1435) was a Chinese admiral and diplomat from the early Ming dynasty,[2] who is often regarded as the greatest admiral in Chinese history. Born into a Muslim family as Ma He, he later adopted the surname Zheng conferred onto him by the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424).
Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng commanded seven treasure voyages across Asia under the commission of the Yongle Emperor and the succeeding Xuande Emperor (r. 1425–1435).
Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci 9 March 1454 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Florence for whom "America" is named.
Vespucci participated in at least two voyages of the Age of Discovery between 1497 and 1504, first on behalf of Spain (1499–1500) and then for Portugal (1501–1502). In 1503 and 1505, two booklets were published under his name containing colourful descriptions of these explorations and other voyages.
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer and nobleman who was the first European to reach India by sea.
Da Gama's first voyage (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia using an ocean route that rounded the southern tip of Africa. This route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean Sea and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula.
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish explorers and conquistadors who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro, Marquess of the Atabillos was a Spanish conquistador, best known for his expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
Born in Trujillo, Spain, to a poor family, Pizarro chose to pursue fortune and adventure in the New World. He went to the Gulf of Urabá, and accompanied Vasco Núñez de Balboa in his crossing of the Isthmus of Panama, where they became the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas.
Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Born in Borge, Østfold, Norway, Amundsen began his career as a polar explorer as first mate on Adrien de Gerlache's Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899. From 1903 to 1906, he led the first expedition to successfully traverse the Northwest Passage on the sloop Gjøa.
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffat missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status as a Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, he became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.
Matteo Ricci
Matteo Ricci SJ (Italian: [matˈtɛːo ˈrittʃi]; Latin: Matthaeus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. In 2022, the Apostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci's heroic virtues, thereby bestowing upon him the honorific of Venerable.
Ricci arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China.
