exploration
Wanderers, expeditioners, and people who couldn't stay put.
Punctilio
After turning back at 86°14′N, Fridtjof Nansen wintered on Franz Josef Land with one companion in a single walrus-skin sleeping bag, and for 234 nights the two men addressed each other as *De* — the formal you.
Rhea darwinii
Darwin was halfway through dinner in Patagonia before he realised the small ostrich on his plate was the rare species he'd been hunting for months.
Too Great a Strain
Gertrude Bell took a first at Oxford before Oxford gave women degrees, climbed ten new Alpine routes in a single season, and in March 1921, in a Cairo hotel, picked Iraq's king.
The Horses and the Eels
In March 1800, Alexander von Humboldt drove thirty wild horses into a Venezuelan pool to exhaust the electric eels, then waded in barefoot and dissected one while it kept shocking him.
This Ain't an Egg-Shop
Who walks 130 miles through an Antarctic winter, in total darkness, to fetch a penguin egg?
My Name Is Shackleton
He emptied his pockets of gold into the snow, then told the meteorologist to keep the twelve-pound banjo.
The Cartwheel Brims
A loom took half her scalp at thirteen; she spent the next eighty-seven years deciding what the world was allowed to see.
The Servant of Jesus
In 1602 the Jesuits sent a former soldier to walk from India to China in disguise to settle a geography argument — what could possibly go wrong?
The Carpetbag Method
She told her relatives she was going on a pilgrimage, packed one carpetbag, and did not come back for sixteen years.
The Spider That Was Named After Her
At fifty-two, a divorced naturalist sold every painting she owned and sailed to a malarial jungle to paint a spider no one believed existed.
The Helmet His Wife Made
Who packs a pre-mixed glob of Vaseline and cotton into his pocket before climbing into a balloon, and what exactly does he expect to happen up there?
The Tweed Jacket in Nuristan
What does a man who crossed the Empty Quarter twice on a camel pack for a Himalayan winter?