All Fun and Games

With primitive ships and without navigation aids such as compasses, the Polynesians located virtually all of the tiny islands spread over 14 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, and colonized them all. They had colonized most of modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia by 1500 B.C., Fiji and Tonga by 1200 B.C., Hawaii, Easter Island, and Madagascar by 500 A.D., and New Zealand by 1000 A.D. (source)

When the troops of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose I invaded Syria and Carchemish on the upper Euphrates in 1525 B.C., they were astounded to see the Nile "falling from the sky" and the river that "in flowing north flowed south." The soldiers had only known the Nile and the cloudless land of Egypt, and so were fascinated to encounter rain (the Nile falling from the sky) and the direction of the flow of the Euphrates, which flows south, which to the Egyptians meant "upstream", so they saw the Euphrates as flowing "backwards". (source)

The first occasion on which humanity "used up" a natural resource was 4,000 years ago, when the supply of tin ore, needed to make bronze, was used up in the Middle East around 2,000 B.C. The rich tin mines of Cornwall, England were dug in the thirteenth century B.C. by Phoenicians looking for tin. In over 3,000 years of mining, around three million tons of tin have been removed from the Cornish mines, and they still have not been exhausted. (source)

The Phoenician navigator Hanno was likely the first to circumnavigate Africa, around 500 B.C. He observed that, at the southern end of Africa, the noonday sun shone in the north. This observation sounded ridiculous to the Greek historian Herodotus, who reported the tale, but this report shows that Hanno likely either did circumnavigate Africa, or or at least made a good attempt to do so. He likely wouldn't have been able to imagine the sun shining in the "wrong" part of the sky if he hadn't seen it. (source)

In the third century B.C., the Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas sailed along the Atlantic coast of Europe, explored Great Britain, sailed north to "Ultima Thule" (Norway) and traversed the Baltic Sea as far as the Vistula. His work On the Ocean, while it has not survived, is the earliest first-hand information on northwestern Europe. (source)

The Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis, a ninth century manuscript, describes the many adventures of St. Brendan the Navigator, who supposedly undertook a seven-year voyage across the Atlantic ocean, eventually reaching what might possibly have been Newfoundland. In 1976–77, Tim Severin, a British scholar, crossed the Atlantic on a boat constructed based on the details described by Brendan, showing that such a voyage would have been possible. (source)

Stone carvings dated between 500 and 1000 A.D. have been found in West Virginia that appear to have been written in Old Irish using the Ogham alphabet. Perhaps they were carved by Irish missionaries in the wake of St. Brendan the Navigator's possible voyage to the new world. (source)

It is possible that black explorers from western Africa visited America centuries before Columbus. There is archaeological evidence that the Olmecs, a Central American people, may have been in contact with blacks. As well, when Columbus arrived in the New World, he heard stories about blacks, and collected golden spearheads identical to those used in West Africa. The Indians referred to the spearheads as "guanin", which means "gold" in West African languages. The shorter distances and the favourable currents would have made a trip to America from West Africa easier than one from Spain.

The first European to see the Pacific Ocean was Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who first saw the Pacific on September 25^th, 1513.

Henry Hudson was not the discoverer of the Hudson River or Hudson Bay; others had previously explored these areas. (source)

Since most early literate civilisations were located around the warm Mediterranean region, the first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until the ninth century A.D., when an account of the travels of the Irish monk St. Brendan in the North Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared. It mentioned that he saw a "floating crystal castle." What else could that have been? (source)

Due to Iceland's geographical isolation from mainland Europe, no humans ever set foot on Iceland until mediaeval times. The first humans to arrive on Iceland were Irish explorers, who arrived no later than the year 795. They established a colony, but it didn't last. By the time the Vikings arrived eighty years later and established a permanent settlement, only a few hermits remained. (source)

To encourage his fellow Norsemen to go to a large, snow- and ice-covered island that he discovered in 982 A.D., Eric the Red named it Greenland. In a few years, twenty-five ships filled with eager settlers sailed for the island. (source)

The Vikings founded a settlement in North America almost 500 years before Columbus "discovered" the New World. In the year 1000, Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, sailed from Greenland on an epic westward voyage that took him past "Helluland" (probably Baffin Island) and "Markland" (probably Labrador) to a land called "Vinland" (modern-day Newfoundland). The Vikings later founded a colony on Vinland, near the modern-day fishing village of L'anse-aux-Meadows. However, the Vikings soon discovered that the lands were already inhabited by "Skraelings" (probably Inuit), who were often hostile. After a few years, the first European colony in the New World was abandoned and the colonists sailed home. (source)

Cheng Ho, court eunuch and great admiral of the Ming Dynasty, led Chinese fleets on seven voyages of conquest and diplomacy, between 1405 and 1433. As a result of Cheng Ho's voyages, which ranged as far as West Africa, 36 countries sent tribute to China. However, in 1433, the eunuchs' opponents gained the upper hand in a power struggle in the Chinese court, and the fleets stopped, shipyards were dismantled, and outbound shipping was forbidden. Had these voyages continued, it is possible that the Chinese would have "discovered" America before Columbus. (source)

Had Marco Polo not been captured by the Genoese and imprisoned for a year, the tales of his historic twenty-two-year adventure in the Far and Middle East (at the end of the thirteenth century) might never have been collected and written down. When he returned to Venice after his odyssey, he became a "gentleman commander" of a war vessel striving to hold off Genoese traders. In a battle of Curzold Island, his galley was captured and Marco was hauled off to Genoa and gaoled. There he met a writer named Rustichello, who, after hearing Marco's yarns, insisted that they be written down. (source)

In the fifteenth century, Prince Henry the Navigator dispatched his sea captains on voyages to explore the African coast. One of Henry's hopes was that his men would discover the rich Christian kingdom of "Prester John", which was cut off from the rest of Christendom by the Islamic conquest. The Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed the east coast of Africa, only to find that Prester John's kingdom did not exist. While they found a Christian kingdom in Ethiopia, it was dismissed as being that of Prester John due to its poverty. (source)

Christopher Columbus was not the only person of his time who believed the world was round. Since the twelfth century, educated people had been aware of the earth's actual shape. However, Columbus thought the world was much smaller than it actually was. He estimated the westward distance from Spain to Asia as being about 2,500 miles, a far cry from the true distance of about 12,000 miles. Had America not been in his way, Columbus' expedition would have ended in death on the endless sea.

Columbus visited England in 1477 and Iceland in the 1480s. It is possible that during these visits he heard that lands lay far to the west, across the Atlantic Ocean. (source)

Christopher Columbus' first transatlantic voyage was accomplished at a speed of about 2.8 miles per hour.

Prince Henry the Navigator never navigated the seas on exploring expeditions. Henry was given this title because he ran an exploration institute at Sagres, Portugal, where astronomers, geographers, admirals, and shipbuilders pooled their expertise for voyages along the African coast that culminated, long after Henry's death, when Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and went on to reach India, in 1497. (source)

Ferdinand Magellan was not the first explorer to sail around the world. During his journey, he and several of his men were killed in the Phillipines, and one of his officers, Juan Sebastián de Elcano, led the expedition back to Spain. (source)

Pedro Álvares Cabral set out on March 9^th, 1500, from Portugal with the intent of rounding the Cape of Good Hope and heading towards India. He decided to tack far across the Atlantic. On April 22^nd, he spotted a mountain, and claimed what appeared to him to be an island in the Atlantic. He erected a cross on the island and sent a messenger back home that he had discovered the "Island of Vera Cruz" for Portugal. What Cabral did not realise, however, was that this "island" was in fact Brazil, the largest country in South America. (source)

Kepler calculated that the first voyages to the moon would take four hours, and thought that the passengers, in order to endure the trip, would take narcotics.

History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. (source)

Why were the first lunar missions nicknamed "Apollo"? At the height of Greek colonization of the ancient world, Apollo was seen as a god who accompanied emigrants and travelers on their way. The name "Apollo" was suggested by Abe Silverstein, an early director of the Lewis Research Center and one of the "founding fathers" of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston. (source)

Meriweather Lewis and William Clark were not the first European explorers to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The first was Vasco Nùñez, but he crossed the narrow isthmus of Central America in 1513. Lewis and Clark weren't the first Europeans to cross North America either. In 1793, the Scotsman Alexander Mackenzie crossed Canada and reached the Pacific.

The first man ever to set foot on the continent of Antarctica was an American sealer, John Davis. He did this on February 7, 1821, but the fact was not known until 1955, when the log of his ship was discovered and studied. (source)

In 1985, NASA estimated that the probability of an accident occurring to the space shuttle was 1 in 100,000. However, on January 28, 1986, only the 25^th shuttle launch, Challenger exploded after take-off, killing all seven astronauts aboard, and on February 1, 2003, the 113^rd mission, Columbia exploded on re-entry, again killing all seven astronauts. Earlier estimates by other groups had estimated the probability as being closer to 1 in 100, a probability that seems more reasonable.