The Explorers by Martin Dugard

Author:Martin Dugard [Dugard, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-67783-7
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

* “The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route,” as it is now known, was submitted to the United Nations as a potential World Heritage Site by the United Republic of Tanzania in 2006.

* Weather, the unknown, and the dark skin tone of Africa’s populace were all reasons for this term.

* Tuckey is a tragic, forgotten figure who did a great deal to advance African exploration. He went to sea as a boy, and climbed through the ranks to receive his commission at the relatively advanced age of twenty-six. His ship was captured by the French in 1805, and he spent nine years as a prisoner of war. During that time Tuckey married fellow prisoner Margaret Stuart and whiled away the hours compiling the four-volume Maritime Geography and Statistics. His first assignment upon his release was the Congo expedition, which sought a way to connect the Congo with the rivers of inner Africa, a task that would be completed by Henry Morton Stanley eighty years later.

† Ronald Ross, a British officer in the Indian Medical Service, was the first to confirm that mosquitoes transmitted malaria. The theory was first put forth by French military doctor Alphonse Laveran nearly two decades earlier, for which Laveran was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1907.

* A subjective list compiled by the author, defined as those land-based animals with total superiority and no physical rivals in their environment: cape buffalo, grizzly bear, polar bear, hippopotamus, salt water crocodile, rhinoceros, African lion, Bengal and Siberian tiger, bull elephant, and Nile crocodile.

* Feral rock pythons have been discovered in the Florida Everglades since the 1990s, thanks to modern snake owners who dispose of their pets once they become too oversized to keep within the confines of a small home ophidiarium.

† Incredibly, the discovery of a new species of venomous viper was announced in 2012. Known as the Matilda viper, it has black and yellow scales, and devil’s horns over its eyes. It is named for the daughter of the man who discovered it.

* The vertical lines on a map. Latitude are the horizontal lines, denoting the Earth’s width. The shorthand “lat is fat” is a handy reminder when confused about which is which.

* Wristwatches didn’t come into vogue until the 1920s.

† In 1675, when the Royal Observatory was first built.

* Something about turning forty left a mark on many an explorer. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but Davison, Cook, and Columbus all set out on their journeys at this point in their lives.

* First summited in 1889 by German climber Hans Meyer and Austrian Ludwig Purtscheller.

† In 1913, by Alaska native Walter Harper.

* A term first coined in the 1952 book The Mountain World by Swiss doctor Edouard Wyss-Dunant.

* Climbers, desert explorers, and nautical adventurers have all used their expertise in wartime.

* French, meaning “people from the mountains.”

* Winner of the RGS Patron’s Medal in 1938.

* The reporter breaking the news was legendary journalist and travel writer James—now Jan—Morris. For my money, she’s one of the great writers of our time.

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