Exploration

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"Explorer" redirects here. For other uses, see Explorer (disambiguation).

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Exploration is the act of searching or traveling for the purpose of discovery, e.g. of unknown regions, including space (space exploration), for oil, gas, coal, ores, caves, water (also known as prospecting), or information.

The term can also be used to describe the first incursions of peoples from one culture into the geographical and cultural environment of others. Although exploration has existed as long as human beings, its peak is seen as being during the Age of Exploration when European navigators travelled around the world discovering new worlds and cultures.

In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of research (the other two being description and explanation). Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon.

1 Notable explorers since 950 A.D.
2 External link
3 Exploration by area
4 See also

[edit] Notable explorers since 950 A.D.

Erik the Red (950 - 1003) - Viking explorer. After being cast out from Iceland, he sailed to Greenland and settled there.
Leif Ericson (980 - 1020) - Norse explorer. Believed to have been the first European to land in North America.
Marco Polo (1254 - 1324) - Italian explorer.
Ibn Battuta (1304 - 1377) - Berber explorer.
Zheng He (1371 - 1433) - Chinese explorer.
John Cabot (c. 1450 - 1499) - Italian explorer. Discovered Newfoundland and claimed it for the Kingdom of England.
Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450 - 1500) - Portuguese explorer. He sailed from Portugal and reached the Cape of Good Hope.
Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506) - Italian explorer. Sailed in 1492 and discovered the "New World" of the Americas.
Juan Ponce de León (c. 1460 - 1521) - Spanish explorer. He explored Florida while vainly trying to find the Fountain of Youth.
Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467 - c. 1520) - Portuguese explorer, generally regarded as first European discoverer of the sea route to Brazil.
Vasco da Gama (c. 1469 - 1524) - Portuguese explorer. He sailed from Portugal to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475 - 1519) - Spanish explorer. The first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama and view the Pacific ocean from American shores.
Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475 - 1541) - Spanish explorer. Conquered the Inca Empire.
Juan Sebastián Elcano (1476 - 1526) - Spanish explorer. Completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in a single expedition after its captain, Magellan, was killed.
Ferdinand Magellan (1480 - 1521) - Portuguese explorer. Initiated the first circumnavigation of the globe in a single expedition. Sailed around Cape Horn and named Pacific Ocean. Died in the Philippines after claiming them for Spain.
Giovanni da Verrazzano (c. 1485 - 1528) - Italian explorer. Explored the northeast coast of America, from Newfoundland to about present day South Carolina.
Hernán Cortés (1485 - 1545) - Spanish explorer. Conquered the Aztec Empire for Spain.
Jacques Cartier (1491 – 1557) - French explorer. Discovered Canada.
Hernando de Soto (c. 1496 - 1542) - Spanish explorer. Explored Florida, mainly northwest Florida, and discovered the Mississippi River.
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (c. 1510 - 1554) - Spanish explorer. Searched for the Seven Cities of Gold and discovered the Grand Canyon in the process.
Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 - 1596) - English explorer. The first Englishman to sail around the world and survive.
Henry Hudson (1570 - 1611) - English explorer. Explored much of the North Atlantic, including Labrador, the coast of Greenland, and Hudson Bay. Presumed dead in a 1611 mutiny of his own crew.
Vitus Bering (1681 - 1741) - Danish explorer. Explored the Siberian Far East and Alaska and claimed it for Russia.
James Cook (1728 - 1779) - English naval captain. Explored much of the Pacific including New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii.
Jean François La Pérouse (1741–1788) was a French Navy officer and explorer whose expedition vanished in Oceania
Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859) - German explorer and scientist whose work was foundational to the field of biogeography.
Captain Meriwether Lewis (1774 - 1809) - American explorer and field scientist who led the Lewis and Clark Expedition into the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest in 1804-1806.
Robert Bartlett (1875 - 1946) - Newfoundland captain. Led over 40 expeditions to the Arctic, more than anyone before or since. Was the first to sail north of 88° N latitude.
Colonel Noel Andrew Croft (1906 - 1998) - held the record for the longest self-sustaining journey across the Arctic in the 1930s for 60 years and would have been the first man to climb Mount Everest]].
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (born July 20, 1919) - New Zealand explorer, together with Tenzing Norgay, the first to climb Mount Everest.
Reinhold Messner (born 17 September 1944) - Italian mountaineer, first man to climb all the 14 peaks higher than 8,000 meters.