Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Expeditions & Discoveries

The ubiquitous picture of the Vikings as horn-helmeted, brutish, hairy giants that mercilessly marauded among the settlements of Northern Europe is based on a smattering of facts combined with an abundance of prejudicial historical writing by those who were on the receiving end of Viking depredations. At the same time, much of the popular picture of the Vikings is a result of the romantic imagination of novelists and artists. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration.

The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." In October of that year, the Italian Christopher Columbus immortalized himself by landing in the New World and beginning the process of European settlement in the Americas for Spain, bringing the Age of Exploration to a new hemisphere with him.

Marco Polo (1254-1324) is an instantly recognizable name, and he is known for his travels, but it's safe to say that his influence and importance has been greatly overlooked in the nearly 700 years since he died. Born in Venice, Marco Polo was in a fortuitous position to participate in trade. He followed in the footsteps of his own family, setting off for Asia with his well-traveled father and uncle. They would not return to Venice for 24 years. When they came back, they had allegedly traveled about 15,000 miles.

Ferdinand Magellan was unquestionably one of the more remarkable figures of the Age of Exploration, and given his fateful expedition, he has the era's most unique legacy. Today he is remembered as the first man to circumnavigate the globe, despite the fact he died thousands of miles away from Spain in the Philippines. It is also commonly overlooked that among the famous and historic expeditions in the early 16th century, Magellan's was by far the most dangerous, unique, and adventurous.

Far out in the south-eastern part of the Pacific Ocean lies one of the world's most remote islands. Located over 2,000 miles away from Chile and South America, the nearest continent, and over 1,300 miles away from its nearest inhabited neighbor, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island is a solitary mass of land alone at the southeastern-most point of the Polynesian Triangle.

In 1927, Today, millions of people fly, and everyone who does views the ground thousands of feet below. But in 1927, air traffic was a relatively new phenomenon, especially in the wilds of southern Peru, and when the first planes passed over the sprawling expanse of the Nazca Desert, passengers looking out their windows saw an incredible sight that they could hardly believe.

Although many denied it, a giant ocean liner was dying. The superstitious nodded their heads, knowing her fate had already been sealed. The freezing Atlantic crept up to the forecastle head as the massive vessel, with all her lights aglow, slowly, almost imperceptibly, sank at the bow.

Pocas empresas de la humanidad tan llamativas, arriesgadas y decisivas para el conocimiento del mundo. A través de un audio imperdible, repase junto a nosotros la historia de la conquista de las agrestes, peligrosas y gélidas del Ártico, y la carrera por ser el primer hombre en llegar a donde nadie jamás pudo antes: El polo Norte.

Am Anfang steht der Plan von der erstmaligen Durchquerung des weißen Kontinents. Doch das Naturwunder Antarktis wird zur Hölle aus Eis...

The exciting narrative begins in 1822, when Jedediah Smith ascended the Missouri River in the first fur-trading expedition of William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry, and ends in 1831, when he was killed by Comanche Indians on the Cimarron River.

Get up close and personal with science as Andrew Kessler narrates his hilarious journey inside NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission - a historic enterprise manned by a motley crew of rocket scientists. The Phoenix Mars mission was the first man-made probe ever sent to the Martian arctic.

In the gold rush era of Virginia City, Montana, crime was afoot and justice shaky. Lawlessness ran amok in the form of gamblers, saloonkeepers, miners, dance hall girls, and road agents - outlaws who ambushed travelers on the road for a chance to steal precious gold. Of all the road agents, Henry Plummer was their king and elected sheriff. Plummer’s notorious road-agent band terrorized the highways until a group of ordinary citizens resolved to take the responsibility of social governance into their hands.

El relato del conocimiento del universo inabarcable, desde la mirada al cielo con el ojo desnudo hasta las sondas enviadas a años luz de la Tierra: una historia que tiene más de 3.600 años de antigüedad.La tarea de resumir más de tres milenios de investigaciones sobre el cielo parece imposible, más difícil aún parece presentarla de modo que pueda ser conocido por cualquier tipo de oyente, independientemente del conocimiento del mismo.

El hombre tiende siempre a inventar utopías y a perseguir quimeras, ya desde la antigüedad territorios como la Atlántida o las Islas Afortunadas, habían sido visitadas por viajeros que traían descripciones de animales increíbles y tesoros infinitos, otro tanto pasaba con regiones como la India de la que se contaban también numerosas leyendas fantásticas que fueron confirmadas, en algunos casos, por hombres que estuvieron allí, las tropas de Alejandro Magno por ejemplo.

La historia que se esconde detrás de una de las mejores novelas de aventuras de todos los tiempos. En 1875, Henry Rider Haggard escribe Las minas del rey Salomón, probablemente una de las mejores novelas de aventuras de todos los tiempos. Muchos intuyen pero pocos conocen el correlato histórico que se oculta detrás de esta novela: la lucha entre colonos ingleses y holandeses contra las tribus africanas por el control de los recursos naturales y de los territorios.

It was November 1806. The explorers had gone without food for one day, then two. Their leader, not yet thirty, drove on, determined to ascend the great mountain. Waist deep in snow, he reluctantly turned back. But Zebulon Pike had not been defeated. His name remained on the unclimbed peak-and new adventures lay ahead of him and his republic. In Citizen Explorer, historian Jared Orsi provides the first modern biography of this soldier and explorer, who rivaled contemporaries Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

On their journey westward, Lewis and Clark demonstrated an amazing ability to identify the new plants and animals they encountered, and their observations enriched science's understanding of the trans-Mississippi West. Others have written about their discoveries and have faithfully cataloged their findings; now a 21st-century biologist reexamines some of those discoveries in the light of modern science to show for the first time their lasting biological significance.

When Columbus first returned to Spain from the Caribbean, he dazzled King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella with exotic parrots, tropical flowers, and bits of gold. Inspired by the promise of riches, countless seafarers poured out of the Iberian Peninsula and wider Europe in search of spices, treasure, and land. Many returned with strange tales of the New World. Curiosity began to percolate through Europe as the New World’s people, animals, and plants ruptured prior assumptions about the biblical description of creation.

Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of more than thirty thousand. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life.

These Chronicles could have been authored by Thomas Jefferson had he been so inclined to do so. He and Captain Meriwether Lewis spent long nights tracing its daily record of "Courses and Distances" onto brown paper on the floor of the East Wing of the White House. After Lewis's untimely death, Jefferson instead relegated the job to Captain William Clark. As a result, the narrative of the expedition has, until now, never been told as Captain Meriwether Lewis intended it to be.