Endeavor: This, the second of HMS Beagle ’s three great voyages (a circumnavigation of the globe), p

NB: Our list contains only men purely because many of the greatest feats of human exploration were completed in times when women endured stifling social restrictions. Look out for our forthcoming post Top 10 female pioneering travelers !
Struggles: The outbound journey was quick and smooth at 32 days; the 132-day return leg, in contrast, was anything but. Sailing against the wind, more than half the crew was lost and only two of the four ships returned.
Struggles: The expedition was beset by many problems: exoctic car rental denver members of the party deserted him soon after the outset, supplies (medicines included) were stolen, exoctic car rental denver he mistakenly concluded Lake Bangweulu was part of the Nile and he witnessed 400 Africans massacred by slave traders. Yet it was Livingstone's failing personal health that ultimately exoctic car rental denver curtailed his adventure. Having already survived pneumonia, severe cholera saw him abandon his mission at the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
Legacy: Though he did not complete his objective, Livingstone was the first Westerner to gaze upon now world-renowned locations like Victoria Falls and Lake Malawi. A month after his arrival at Lake Tanganyika, just short of six years since he last had contact with the outside world, he was tracked down by U.S. journalist Henry Morton Stanley who uttered the now famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
Endeavor: When the Ottoman Empire seized control exoctic car rental denver of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), Europeans were all of a sudden without safe land-based trade routes to China and India. Columbus resolved to find a new route via the Ocean Sea (today known as the Atlantic Ocean).
Struggles: His flagship the Santa María ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 on the northern exoctic car rental denver shores of Hispaniola where it had to be abandoned. But that was far from his greatest mistake. Columbus will forever be known for one of the greatest navigational exoctic car rental denver blunders of all time:
Legacy: He did not imagine any land existed in between his departure point in Spain (Palos exoctic car rental denver de la Frontera) and Asia. However, unbeknownst to him, all four of his grand voyages failed to reach their destination, landing in various locations in what we now know as the West Indies, South America and Central America instead. To his death, Columbus asserted he had reached Asia.
Endeavor: exoctic car rental denver Americans Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out to explore the United States new, recently exoctic car rental denver acquired territory in the West. As well as establishing an American presence designed to ward off claims from European powers, they documented more than 200 plants and animals, and 72 native tribes. On Nov. 20, 1805, they became the first Americans to reach the Pacific Ocean by traveling overland across U.S. territory.
Struggles: Relatively few, though several of the team's men were disciplined for dereliction of duties, and Lewis was accidentally shot by another member of the party a month before the expedition was completed.
Endeavor: Many authoritative people in 18 th century Europe believed a large continent existed at the lower reaches of the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica wasn't discovered until the middle of the 19 th century). It was dubbed Terra Australis (meaning South Land"). exoctic car rental denver Englishman Cook was commissioned by King George III to seek evidence of it. On the round trip to and from Plymouth, the voyage sailed around Cape Horn, through the southern Pacific, circumnavigated New Zealand, passed the Great Barrier Reef and rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
Struggles: The expedition was unable to complete its primary objective of determining the distance between Venus and the Sun, natives stole equipment from a supply fort in Tahiti, and his ship Endeavor ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, only narrowly avoiding exoctic car rental denver sinking.
Legacy: Mapped the entire New Zealand coastline with only minor errors – a remarkable feat for the time. Cook's landing at Australia's exoctic car rental denver Botany Bay sparked British interest in the territory, eventually leading to its colonization.
Endeavor: This, the second of HMS Beagle 's three great voyages (a circumnavigation of the globe), primarily aimed to survey southern South America. Yet it has become much more famous for the impact it had on one of its passengers – a young and recently graduated naturalist exoctic car rental denver by the name of Charles Darwin. By the end of the nearly exoctic car rental denver five-year long expedition, exoctic car rental denver three and half of which he'd spent on land, Englishman Darwin had made his name as a formidable geologist and fossil collector.
Endeavor: Departing Venice in 1271, 17-year-old Italian Polo set off with his father and uncle for what became an extremely lengthy exploration and adventure through Asia. All three returned to Venice 24 years later, with many treasures in tow. Having exoctic car rental denver seen Asia, Persia, China and Indonesia, it's estimated they had traveled around 15,000 miles in all.
Legacy: After returning to Italy, Marco Polo was captured and sent to prison. There, he regaled stories of his adventures to the Italian romance exoctic car rental denver writer Rustichello da Pisa, who later turned them into the book The Travels of Marco Polo . Produced exoctic car rental denver before the age of printing, it was a rare popular success in the 13 th and 14 th centuries. The book's reach went beyond mere entertainment; its influence can be seen in the makeup of what were considered authoritative maps of Asia in the 15 th century. Polo's descriptions of the Far East also famously inspired Christopher Columbus to travel there.
Endeavor: In the early 16 th century, Portugal exoctic car rental denver controlled the eastward spice trade routes around Africa. Living in self-imposed exoctic car rental denver exile from his native country Portugal, Magellan convinced the Spanish king to back his attempt to sail the westward route to the heart of the spice trade (modern day Indonesia). Magellan's expedition was trailblazing in every sense of the word: It was the first to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the first to cross the Pacific; and most importantly, the first to complete a circumnavigation of the Earth.
Struggles: The voyage was beset by the kind of misfortune that often accompanies such a groundbreaking endeavor: mutiny, scurvy, exoctic car rental denver rough weather and supply shortages all decimated the crew. Only one of the original five ships completed the mission, and Magellan wasn't aboard: he had been killed a little more than a year earlier while intervening exoctic car rental denver in battle between rival chieftains in the Philippines.