exploration
Wanderers, expeditioners, and people who couldn't stay put.
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?
The Valet
How does a disguise that fooled 116 French sailors for sixteen months collapse the instant its wearer steps onto a Tahitian beach?
The Last Flight of Roald Amundsen
Why did the most meticulous explorer who ever lived climb into a prototype flying boat to rescue a man he openly despised?
The Blessing of a Good Thick Skirt
She fought a crocodile with a paddle, wore leeches like a fur collar, and insisted to her dying day that trousers were beneath her — so what, exactly, did the skirt save her from?
The Admiral and the Unicorn
A giraffe walked into the Ming court in 1414, and the Confucian scholars decided it was proof from heaven.