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Tenzing Norgay: The Mountaineer Who Refused to be Categorized
It’s May 28, 1953, and two men are standing at the top of the world. One, a farmer from New Zealand called Edmund Hillary, reaches out his hand in a formal gesture of congratulations. The other, known...
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Pius “Mau” Piailug: Master Navigator of Micronesia
It’s 1976, and a Polynesian voyaging canoe christened Hōkūleʻa is slicing through the ocean somewhere between Hawaiʻi and Tahiti. A Micronesian man named Pius “Mau” Piailug—usually referred to as...
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Florence Baker, Unsung Survivor
“Had I been alone, it would have been no hard lot to die on the untrodden path before me; but there was one who, although my greatest comfort was also my greatest care…gladly would I have left her in...
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The First Black American to Reach the North Pole
On April 6, 1909, six men and forty dogs stood on a sheet of sea ice floating 413 nautical miles off the coast of Greenland. Their faces were raw after driving at break-neck speed for five days to...
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Dervla Murphy: The Godmother of Hitting the Road
Widely recognized as Ireland’s premier female travel writer, Dervla Murphy took her fair share of risks throughout a career that spanned seven decades and took her to thirty countries. Her adventures...
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Ada Blackjack’s Secret Weapon
It’s August 19, 1923, and the crew of the Donaldson have finally reached the target of their rescue mission: Wrangel Island. They head toward the miserable collection of huts huddled on the shore. In...
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James Holman, the “Blind Traveller”
James Holman racked up more than a quarter of a million miles in his lifetime—further than anyone had ever traveled before. As Eitan Bar-Yosef points out, his exploits are the stuff that once filled...
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Mbarak Mombée: An African Explorer Robbed of His Name
In nineteenth-century Britain, rumors about “the curse of the Nile” abounded. As Nezar AlSayyad points out, most explorers who sought the great river’s source not only failed in their mission, they...
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Beryl Markham, Warrior of the Skies
On September 5, 1936, two fishermen in Nova Scotia stumbled across a young woman covered in blood, wading through a bog. In the background, a single-engine aircraft was half-buried in the mud. “I’m...
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Zheng He, the Great Eunuch Admiral
Zheng He’s sixty-two years were filled with as many crests and chasms as the oceans upon which he sailed. During his life, he went from the son of a powerful political family to prisoner, servant to...
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Nellie Bly Experiences It All
In September 1887, a petite young woman was brought before doctors at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Upon observing the vacant look in her eyes and hearing her repeatedly mumble something about a...
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