The moon landing of its day. Between 1768 and 1771, Captain James Cook and his ship, HMS Endeavour, circumnavigated the globe on the first exclusively scientific voyage. This site presents most of the botanical drawings and engravings prepared by artist Sydney Parkinson before his untimely death at sea, and by other artists back in England working from Parkinson's initial sketches.
posted by thatwhichfalls on Jan 4, 2004 - 9 comments

This week marks the 90th anniversary of the death of Robert Falcon Scott and four companions on their return trip from the South Pole. Most of the blame for the failure of the polar expedition has been placed on critical blunders Scott made in his trek to the pole but Antarctic meterologist Susan Sontag says that although Scott cut his safety margins too close, unusually cold weather provided the killing blow. On a related subject, next month A&E premires a movie starring Kenneth Branagh as Shackleton (flash site) who saved his crew after their ship shattered in Antartic pack ice.
posted by KirkJobSluder on Mar 22, 2002 - 4 comments

Did China circumnavigate the globe before Magellan?

"When explorer Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, he was 72 years behind a Chinese expeditionary force, which had already made its way to the area. And although Captain James Cook was credited with discovering Australia for the British Empire in 1770, the Chinese had mapped the island continent 337 years earlier."

All this was accomplished by a castrated eunuch named Zheng He.

What do you think?
posted by AsiaInsider on Mar 4, 2002 - 33 comments

A POLISH explorer who sets off next week in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold in South America, says that he has located it using a 16th-century Jesuit manuscript from the Vatican archives.
posted by stbalbach on Feb 17, 2002 - 23 comments