Yves Rossy  flew his jet engine-powered wing in the first public demonstration before the world's press

David Hempleman-Adams became the first person to complete the Explorers Grand Slam in  when he conquered the North and South Poles and scaled the highest mountain in each of seven continents

Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep with his bathyscaphe Trieste. The depth of the descent was measured at 10,916 meters

William Beebe and Otis Barton descended 183m off Nonsuch Island in Bermuda, where in 1934 they made a record descent of 923m

George Mallory and Andrew Irvine never returned to high camp after their attempt to climb to the top of Mount Everest via the North Col route

Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ookeah reached the geographic North Pole

the Explorers Club is an international multidisciplinary professional society formed by the survivors of Frederick Cook's 1894 Arctic expedition. The Society is dedicated to the advancement of field research and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore

Fridtjof Nansen crossed the Arctic ocean and almost reached the North Pole  by allowing the Fram to drift north through the sea ice

Fridtjof Nansen succeeded in crossing the Greenland icefield on skis from east to west with Otto Sverdrup, Olaf Dietrichson, Kristian Kristiansen Trana, Samuel Balto and Ole Nielsen Ravna

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld circumnavigated Eurasia, being the first to make the whole length of the Northeast passage

the summit of the Großglockner was reached by Martin and Sepp Klotz, along with two other carpenters, and even a clergyman from Dölsach named Horasch

David Thompson explored and mapped the country west of Hudson Bay and Lake Superior, across the Rocky Mountains to the headwaters of the Columbia River and down the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean

the first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was by Jacques Balmat and the

doctor Michel Paccard. This climb, initiated by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who gave a

reward for the successful ascent, traditionally marks the start of modern mountaineering

Louis-Antoine de Bougainville undertook the first French circumnavigation

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle navigated the Great Lakes by sailing ship and canoed down the Mississippi River

Henry Hudson explored the bay that now bears his name on his ship the Discovery, after having sailed up Hudson river a year earlier on an expedition for the Dutch East India Company

Samuel de Champlain landed at the "point of Quebec" and set about fortifying the area, establishing the first permanent European settlement in what today is Canada

Captain John Smith established the first permanent English settlement in North America the Virginia Colony at Jamestown

Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent after being sent from Bantam in the Dutch East Indies to search for New Guinea. He made a landfall at the western shore of Cape York in Queensland in 1606, believing it still to be a part of New Guinea

Cornelis de Houtman discovered a new sea route from Europe to Indonesia and managed to begin the Dutch spice trade

the first English colony was established at St. John's in Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, soon after followed the foundation of colonies on Roanoke Island, Virginia in 1587, Popham in 1607, Cuper's Cove in 1610, Plymouth in 1620, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632

Francis Xavier reached Japan but it was not until August 15 that he went ashore at Kagoshima

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California in the United States

the legend of El Dorado

Fray Tomás de Berlanga the fourth Bishop of Panama, sailed to Peru to settle a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and his lieutenants. De Berlanga's vessel drifted off course when the winds diminished, and his party reached the Galápagos Islands

New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period extending from the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River, by Jacques Cartier in 1534, to the cession of New France to Spain and to the Kingdom of Great Britain under the Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian war/ Seven Years' war

Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire for Spain

Giovanni da Verrazano became the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between South Carolina and Newfoundland when he was sent by King

Francis I of France to explore the region for a route to the Pacific Ocean

Hernan Cortes conquered the Mexica/Aztec Empire for Spain

Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached the summit of the mountain range along the

Chucunaque River on the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific

Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo

Amerigo Vespucci wrote in a letter to de' Medici that the land masses he had explored with Alonso de Ojeda and Gonçalo Coelho were much larger than anticipated and unlike the Asia described by earlier Europeans and, therefore, must be a New World. In 1499 he had discovered the mouth of the Amazon and the Orinoco River, while in 1502 he sailed as far south as Patagonia

Alonso de Ojeda journeyed to the New World with three vessels and accompanied by the cosmographer Juan de la Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci. In a little over three weeks he sighted the mainland near the mouth of the Orinoco River, and after landing on Trinidad and at other places, discovered a harbour which he  called Venezuela (little Venice), from its resemblance to the bay of Venice

the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Spanish and the Portuguese along a north-south meridian 370 leagues (1770 km; 1100 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands

on his second voyage Christopher Columbus founded the first Spanish colony in the New World on the island of Hispaniola

the Egg of Columbus

the New World

Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo River and sailed down the African west coast as far south as what today is Angola

Didrik Pining is said to have landed on Newfoundland and Labrador together with Hans Pothorst, also from Hildesheim, and the Portuguese explorers João Vaz Corte-Real and Álvaro Martins

João Vaz Corte-Real discovered Terra Nova do Bacalhau on his explorations in the Northwest Atlantic

the Portuguese Armada managed to conquer the North African trade centre Ceuta, thus founding the Portuguese Empire: the earliest and longest lived of the western european colonial empires (1415-1999)

European missions to the Mongols led by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, Ascelin, André de Longjumeau and William of Rubruck

Leif Ericson sailed to and landed in North America, naming what is known today as Baffin Island, Helluland, what is known today as Labrador, Markland and what is known today as Newfoundland, Vínland

Saint Brendan sailed to the Hebrides, the Canary Islands, the Azores and Iceland

Zhang Qian opened up Chinese trade and helped begin the Silk Road on his travels to the steppes of Central Asia