Some of the most important explorations of Western civilization (in chronological order) :
| Exploration | When | Who (explorer) |
|---|---|---|
| Northwest African coast | about 500 BC | Hanno the Navigator |
| The Mediterranean Sea | 5th century BC | Himilco the Navigator |
| Around western Europe to Thule Island | about 330 BC | Pytheas of Marseilles |
| The Middle East and India | 325 BC-280 BC | Alexander the Great |
| Greenland | 900 | Gunnbjörn Ulfsson |
| Silk Road | 1274-1295 | Marco Polo |
| Azores | 1427 | Diogo de Silves |
| Cape Bojador | 1434 | Gil Eanes |
| Sierra Leone | 1460 | Pêro de Sintra |
| Congo River | 1482 | Diogo Cão |
| Cape of Good Hope | 1487 | Bartolomeu Dias |
| Americas | 1492 | Christopher Columbus |
| Sea route to India | 1497-1498 | Vasco da Gama |
| Caribbean | 1493-1502 | Christopher Columbus |
| Jamaica | 1494 | Christopher Columbus |
| Brazil | 1500 | Pedro Álvares Cabral |
| Inland Mexico and Central America | 1519-1524 | Hernán Cortés |
| Circumnavigate the Globe | 1519-1522 | Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano |
| Timor | 1522 | Juan Sebastián Elcano |
| Peru, Inca Empire and Ecuador | 1531-1534 | Francisco Pizarro |
| The North | 1574-1631 | Henry Hudson |
| The North | 1594-1597 | Willem Barents |
| Oceania | 1642-1643 | Abel Tasman |
| Oceania | 1768-1779 | James Cook |
| North Pacific, western Alaska, east shores of Asia | 1771 | Moric Benovsky |
| Hawaiian Islands | 1778 | James Cook |
| Central America and Latin America | 1799-1803 | Alexander von Humboldt |
| North America | 1804-1806 | Lewis and Clark Expedition |
| The North Magnetic Pole | 1831-06-01 | James Clark Ross |
| Africa | 1849-1863 | David Livingstone |
| The Burke and Wills expedition (Central Australia) | 1860-1861 | Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills |
| The Northern Sea Route | 1878 | Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld |
| The South Magnetic Pole | January 16, 1909 | Douglas Mawson, Edgeworth David, and Alistair Mackay |
| The North Pole | April 6, 1909 | Robert Peary |
| The South Pole | December 14, 1911 | Roald Amundsen |
| The South Pole | January 1, 1918 | Robert Falcon Scott |
| Mount Everest Summit | May 29, 1953 | Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay |
| The Moon | July 20, 1969 | Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) |
| Mars | 1960 to present | NASA and other space agency exploration robots |
Famous quotes containing the words list of and/or list:
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)