Top 5 Famous Expeditions

5. Stanley’s Search for Livingstone

Dr. David Livingstone was a missionary who had been sent to Africa in 1841. He set out to explore the African interior when the Kolobeng Mission where he had been working, closed. He discovered Victoria Falls and became one of the first westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. He then grudgingly set his sights on finding the source of the Nile, a mystery more than three thousand years old. His journey took him from Zanzibar, up the Ruvuma River to Lake Malawi and then to Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. By the time he reached Ujiji he was practically alone, most of his supplies had been stolen and he had fallen ill. He sent word to Zanzibar for more supplies and continued to Lake Mweru and Lake Bangweulu with slave traders. He found the Lualaba River and, believing it was in fact the source of the Nile, he returned to Ujiji, where he found that his fresh supplies had been stolen. By then rumors of his death had been swirling throughout Europe and America for a few years and caught the attention of a young American journalist by the name of Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley was born John Rowlands in Wales and was orphaned at an early age. He came to America when he was eighteen years old and began working for a trader named Henry Stanley.  When Stanley died, John took his name and joined the Confederate Army. After the Civil War he became a journalist working for the New York Herald. The newspaper funded his expedition to find Livingstone- he began in Zanzibar in 1871. He followed the same route as his predecessor and faced many of the same challenges such as desertion and tropical diseases like malaria and dysentery. Stanley found Livingstone on October 27, 1871 in Ujiji. He was standing in the midst of a group of Arab slave traders and Stanley approached him and uttered the famous greeting “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
The Guides
Stanley’s expedition was guided by 200 experienced porters, most of whom deserted the expedition or died of disease along the way. So many porters tried to leave that Stanley began flogging them. Livingstone, on the other hand, had set out with a team consisting of freed slaves, twelve Sepoys and two loyal servants from his previous expeditions. When Livingstone died in 1873 it was these two servants, Chuma and Susi, that brought his body and his journal to the coast so it could be taken back to England.
4. Lewis and Clark and the Expansion into the West


In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase turned America’s attention to the west. The American government had no idea what it had bought from France, so President Thomas Jefferson got Congress to set aside $2,500 for an expedition, just weeks after the transaction was completed. It was to be led by US Army Captain Mariwether Lewis, who selected William Clark as his partner. They left St. Louis in May 1804 with 3 sergeants and 22 soldiers, as well as volunteers, interpreters and Clark’s slave. They began by heading up the Missouri River and wintering at Fort Mandan (now the site of Bismark, North Dakota). In the spring they continued to the headwaters of the river and then crossed the Continental Divide before following the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia Rivers west to the Pacific. At the mouth of the Columbia they built Fort Clatsop, which later became Astoria, Oregon. On their return journey, they split into three groups after crossing the Rockies to map more land. They reunited near where the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers converged and continued together to St. Louis. They arrived in St. Louis to a heroes’ welcome on September 23, 1806. Their 28-month journey proved that there was no transcontinental water route and they brought back a treasure trove of information, including maps of their route, descriptions of Plains Indian culture and observations of the environment.
The Guides
Lewis and Clark were guided from Fort Mandan (Bismark) by a young Shoshone Indian woman named Sacagawea. She guided the expedition thousands of miles carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste on her back. Her knowledge and her relationship with her people were an invaluable addition to their mission.
3. Sir Edmund Hillary and the First Successful Everest Expedition

Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand on July 20, 1919. He studied mathematics and science at the University of Auckland. He then became a beekeeper with his brother Rex,  climbing several peaks during his spare time. When World War II broke out, he joined the Air Force but withdrew his application before it could be considered. Later under conscription he would join the RNZAF as a navigator. In 1953 he set his sights on the world’s highest peak. At the time the route to Everest was closed through Chinese Tibet and the Nepalese government only allowed one expedition per year, so he had to wait for the British attempt in 1953. John Hunt, the leader of the expedition, named two teams for the ascent: Tom Bourdillion would be with Charles Evans and Edmund Hillary would be paired with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay.
The total expedition included 362 porters, 20 Sherpa guides and 10,000 lbs. of baggage. Bourdillion and Evans were the first pair to attempt to reach the summit- they came within 100m of the apex before turning back because of exhaustion. Hillary and Norgay began their assault two days later on the South Col Route. On May 29, 1953 at 11:30am local time the pair reached the summit with Hillary placing his foot on the summit first. They stopped to take photos of their achievement and buried some sweets and a small cross before making the descent. The first person to greet them was George Lowe, Hillary’s lifelong friend, who had climbed up to bring them hot soup. Hillary met Lowe with the words “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.” For their efforts Hillary and expedition leader John Hunt were both knighted and Norgay was awarded the George Medal by Queen Elizabeth II. Hunt was made a life peer in Britain and Hillary was a founding member of the Order of New Zealand.
The Guides
Born into a Sherpa tribe in 1914, Tenzing Norgay proved to be an invaluable member of the 1953 Everest team. This wasn’t his first trip to the top of the world’s largest peak, he had been on six previous expeditions up Everest. Norgay had originally joined the expedition as a Sherpa guide but when he saved Hillary from falling to his death in a crevasse, Hillary began to think of him as the perfect climbing partner for his ascent.
2. Christopher Columbus’ Discovery of the New World

One of the most well known explorers in the world, Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. Columbus grew up helping his father at his cheese stand. In 1470 the family moved to Savona and later that same year he became a seaman in the Portuguese merchant marine. In 1492 Columbus was sponsored by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I of Spain to try to reach Asia by a westward route. He departed from Palos, Spain on August 3, 1492 with three ships, The Santa Maria, The Nina and The Pinta. He made his way to the Castile owned Canary Islands, where he restocked his ships and continued for five weeks across the Atlantic Ocean. They sighted land at 2am on October 12, 1492.  When they reached the island Columbus named it San Salvador (they were in the Bahamas although it is not known exactly which island it was). He explored Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) where he founded the settlement of La Navidad. During his expedition he encountered Lucayan, Taino and Arawak Indians. When he returned to Spain, he kidnapped 10-25 Indians to bring with him (only seven or eight survived). He arrived in Palos on March 15, 1493 and was named Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor General of all the lands he had discovered and would discover in the future. Columbus would make another three journeys to the New World, filling in more and more of what we now call the Caribbean.
The Guides
The land that Columbus discovered was so foreign to the Western world at the time that no one could have possibly guided him to it. However, Columbus wasn’t looking for America, he was looking for Asia. He would have used The Travels of Marco Polo, Pierre d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi, and Ptolemy’s estimation of the circumference of the earth as guides.
1. Neil Armstrong’s First Steps on the Moon

Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio.  At an early age, he was fascinated by airplanes. On his sixteenth birthday, Armstrong was issued a pilot’s license and he even built a small wind tunnel in his basement where he did experiments on model planes. After two years at Purdue University he was called to active duty with the Navy where he flew 78 combat missions during the Korean War. When he returned from the war he completed his degree in aeronautical engineering. He then became a test pilot at the NCAA High Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In September 1962, Armstrong became America’s first civilian astronaut and began training in Houston, Texas. He was an alternate command pilot for the Gemini 5 and was command pilot for Gemini 8 in 1966 where he fixed a malfunction that made the vehicle go out of control, landing within 1.1 nautical miles of the intended landing point. He went back to his training and was an alternate for Gemini 11 but he impressed those who would choose the first crew to go to the moon. In January 1969 he was chosen as commander of the Apollo 11 mission that would land on the moon. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32am on July 16, 1969. Their successful journey took four days and they landed on the moon on July 20 with the world watching and listening on TV and radio. At 10:56pm Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, saying “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong and Aldrin spent two hours walking on the moon, deploying a seismograph and wind particle collector and collecting rock and soil samples.
The Guides
Armstrong and the other members of the Apollo 11 team were guided from the ground by a group of hundreds of flight controllers, each of whom responsible for a single operation of the vehicle. They were headed by Flight Director, Gene Kranz, who was also the Flight Director for Gemini 4 and odd-numbered Apollo missions, most notably he was responsible for bringing Apollo 13 home safely.
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