Explorers' Places Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cooper Creek, Australia

The Burke and Wills expedition was promoted by the Royal Society of Victoria. The aim was first to travel from Melbourne to Cooper's Creek (near the area where the borders of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia meet) and then to proceed north through unknown territory to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria, thus to complete the first journey from the south to north of Australia.
Leaving a depot at Cooper's Creek, the expedition made it to the north of Queensland, but only three men made it back to Cooper's Creek. It is one of those historical tragedies that only a few hours before they arrived, the camp had been cleared and the men who had been left there had started on the return to Melbourne. Both Burke and Wills died in that vicinity, while the third man John King was found by an eventual rescue party living with a native tribe. King was the only man to complete the journey both ways.

These men (Burke and Wills) are not to be confused with Burke and Hare who were notorious for obtaining corpses and selling them to Robert Knox for his Edinburgh anatomy lectures.
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Answer: The island of Hispaniola

While there is still some scholarly disagreement, the consensus opinion is that Columbus first went ashore on the island of San Salvador on or about October 12. He then explored a few other West Indies islands before building a small settlement which he called Espanola (Little Spain) on the island now comprising Haiti and The Dominican Republic.
Columbus found a thriving native population of between half a million and several million friendly Tainos. After multiple subsequent voyages by Columbus and others under the Spanish flag, to colonize and convert the indigenous people, within thirty years the vast majority of Tainos died of smallpox, a disease brought by the Europeans.
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Answer: The North Pole

Matthew Henson, Peary's polar exploration partner, and an African-American, received much less credit than he deserved, perhaps due to the racism of the times.
Since the North Pole, unlike its southern counterpart, is located on a frozen sea of floating ice, rather than a solid landmass, traveling to it on foot is much more difficult, and in early twentieth century, more difficult to document. Both men's claims were published within a week of each other. Cook's was ultimately discredited not only because of the lost notes, but because it was revealed that his earlier claim to have reached the Summit of Denali (Mt McKinley until recently) in Alaska was fraudulent.
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Answer: Matto Grosso, Brazil

Percy Harrison Fawcett DSO (18 August 1867 - during or after 1925), was no amateur. He had led several expeditions to Brazil from 1906, and it was after reading about one of these that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his adventure story "The Lost World".
Somehow Fawcett became convinced that somewhere in the jungles of the Matto Grosso in Brazil there was an ancient lost city (which he referred to as "Z" rather than "Eldorado"). With his eldest son Jack and a friend Raleigh Rimell he explored an area near the present city of Cuiabá (then a small settlement). They reached a place where on an earlier expedition Fawcett had had to shoot his last horse - "Dead Horse Camp". Here they sent their guides back to Cuiabá with their last letters - and that was the last heard from them.
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Answer: The Northwest Passage

Unfortunately, she had cause to be worried. Sir John Franklin commanded two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, leading an expedition to break through what was hoped to be the last lap of the Northwest Passage. By 1848 the ships had been icebound for a year near King William Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Franklin and others were already dead and what remained of both crews set off over the ice and were lost. Lady Franklin lobbied tirelessly for search and rescue expeditions, five of which she financed herself.

She died in 1875, still looking. Lady Franklin Bay, off Ellesmere Island, is named for her. The wreck of the Erebus was discovered in 2014 and the Terror, in 2016. [S]

Answer: L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

According to the 'Vinland Saga', around 1000 CE Leif Ericson sailed west from Greenland to a place where trees, wheat and grapes grew abundantly. The L'Anse aux Meadows site at the northern tip of Newfoundland is the only known Viking settlement in North America and generally assumed to be 'Vinland'.

However, many claim that the Vinland was probably Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick, as what was growing there around 1000 CE more accurately resembled the Viking description of grapes and wheat.

The only Viking artifacts outside Newfoundland were found near Nipigon, Ontario in the 1930s, but they proved to be a hoax. [S]

Answer: A sea route to India

Before the 16th century, Europeans got their spices from Arab traders who carried them overland in caravans. At the time pepper, in particular, was literally worth its weight in gold. In 1486 King John appointed a sea expedition under Bartolomeu Dias to chart a sea route east to India.

He succeeded in rounding the Cape of Good Hope before turning back. Vasco da Gama would finally succeed, landing in Kolkata in 1499. The Portuguese would maintain control over this sea route and their monopoly on spices from India and Ceylon for almost a century. Portuguese traders would scuttle their ships if they thought they were being followed, the route was so secret.

They would eventually be forced to share the wealth with the British and Dutch. [S]

Answer: James Bay

Henry Hudson is one of the few to lead expeditions in search of both the Northwest and Northeast Passage. His first two voyages took him northeast, and on the second he reached as far as the Novaya Zemlya archipelago before ice blocked further passage.

In 1609, working for the Dutch, he headed west but, blocked again, he followed his nose southwest, sailing past Manhattan Island and up the Hudson river, establishing Dutch hegemony in the region. His last voyage, this time heading northwest, began in 1610.

This time his ship made it through the Hudson Straight and down through Hudson's Bay into James Bay, where he wintered. In the spring the crew mutinied and set Hudson off in a small boat with a few loyal crew members and his young son. What happened to him is a mystery. Only eight crew members made it back to England, where they were all hanged for murder. [S]

Answer: Native born in the state of Ohio

Glenn, who was born in Cambridge, Ohio (1921-2016) also served as a U.S. Senator from Ohio (1974-1999) and was the oldest person at age 77 to travel in space again, as a member of the Discovery Space Shuttle mission. He left Muskingum College in Ohio without graduating to join the Army Air Force as the U.S.entered World War 2. Also serving as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, he was awarded numerous medals. Later, after his historic 1962 orbital flight, he received several honorary doctorate degrees. Glenn, who died a resident of Ohio, is buried at the National Cemetery in Arlington VA.
Armstrong (1930-2012) was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He graduated Purdue University in Indiana in 1955 and received a Master of Science in 1970 from U.S.C. Armstrong was a test pilot for the Air Force before joining NASA. After his military and NASA career, Armstrong was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at University of Cincinnati. He died in hospital at Cincinnati. After a state funeral in Washington D.C.authorized by President Obama, Armstrong was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Atlantic Ocean from a U.S. Navy ship.
The Johnson Space Center was not founded until 1973, long after both astronauts' training.
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Answer: Ross Ice Shelf

James Clark Ross led his two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, on three consecutive expeditions in Antarctic waters. In the (Antarctic) summer of 1840-41, they left Tasmania and sailed south into the ice-packs. That season they discovered Victoria Land, McMurdo Sound, two volcanoes (one of which - Mount Erebus - was active) that they named after their ships, and the extensive ice shelf that Ross called the Great Icy Barrier. The following year they explored more of the Ice Barrier before over-wintering at Port Louis in the Falkland Islands. The final season they surveyed the Antarctic Peninsula before returning home to England in September 1843.
Ross' expedition did a huge amount of work in the fields of geography, magnetism, botany and zoology, one major achievement being to accurately locate the South magnetic pole. It was the last expedition made entirely under sail, because although the same two ships were shortly to be used in an Arctic expedition, for that they were fitted with steam engines and screws.
On his return, the leader was knighted and became Sir James Clark Ross.
Irishman Captain Francis Crozier was second-in-command of the Ross expedition, commanding HMS Terror. Fate took him and his ship to the Arctic a little later, where he was again captain of the Terror and this time second-in-command on Sir John Franklin's ill-fated attempt to find the North-West Passage.
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