Ten questions on the great journeys of discovery, each with the credit placed where it actually belongs.
Exploration history is full of claims that need a footnote, and this quiz supplies them. It covers the major voyages and expeditions across European, Arab and Chinese traditions, plus the polar races and the first ascent of Everest. Where the popular version of a story overstates one person\'s role, the explanation says so, including the crews, guides and navigators normally left out. The intention is accuracy rather than deflation, since the journeys remain remarkable once told properly.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: A. Magellan's expedition
Why: Ferdinand Magellan led it from 1519, but was killed in the Philippines partway. Juan Sebastian Elcano brought the surviving ship home in 1522.
Answer: A. Roald Amundsen
Why: Amundsen's Norwegian party arrived in December 1911, using dogs and skis. Scott reached it weeks later and died with his companions on the return.
Answer: A. Edmund Hillary
Why: Hillary and Tenzing summited together and always declined to say who stepped up first. John Hunt led the wider expedition that put them in position.
Answer: D. China
Why: He described decades at the court of Kublai Khan in his account. Some historians question how much he saw directly rather than heard reported.
Answer: D. India
Why: He reached Calicut in 1498 by sailing around the southern tip of Africa. The route broke the overland monopoly on the spice trade.
Answer: A. Morocco
Why: He set out from Tangier in 1325 and travelled for around thirty years across Africa, Asia and Europe. His recorded journey covers a greater distance than Marco Polo's.
Answer: D. Africa
Why: His seven voyages from 1405 reached the east coast of Africa, decades before Portuguese ships rounded the Cape. The fleets were abandoned soon afterward by imperial decision.
Answer: A. Western North America
Why: They crossed from the Mississippi to the Pacific between 1804 and 1806. The Shoshone interpreter Sacagawea was essential to the expedition's survival.
Answer: C. The Pacific
Why: Cook mapped much of the Pacific across three voyages from 1768. His charts of New Zealand and eastern Australia were remarkably accurate for the period.
Answer: D. 1492
Why: He made landfall in the Caribbean while seeking a western route to Asia. The islands were long inhabited, and he never accepted that it was not Asia.
Each correct answer awards 10 XP. There is zero point penalty for incorrect guesses, encouraging learning through exploration.
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Ships crushed in ice, disputed claims, and the people whose names were left off the reports.
Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was lost in 1915 in what way?
Inland journeys, the guides who made them possible, and the names that were already there.
The first descent of the Amazon by a European party, in 1541 and 1542, was led by whom?
Ptolemy, al-Idrisi, portolan charts and the draughtsman who straightened the Underground.
Ptolemy's Geographia, written in the second century, was influential chiefly because it did…