The Longest Journey Trivia Quiz

Answer: James Cook

Abel Tasman was the first European to discover New Zealand in 1642. However, he never landed after his landing party were attacked before reaching shore. British explorer James Cook was the first European to land there during his first voyage in 1769.

Answer: Christopher Columbus

On a Spanish-sponsored expedition, Italian explorer Columbus ended up landing on the island of Hispaniola in 1492 when his flagship Santa Maria ran aground. He started the small short-lived outpost of Navidad with materials from the wreckage of the vessel and some crewmen. The site of the former colony is now part of Haiti.

Answer: John Speke

The White Nile is the longer of the two Nile tributaries, the other being the Blue Nile. British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke undertook a three-year expedition to find the source of the White Nile in 1856. Illness saw Burton left at Lake Tanganyika (they were the first Europeans to see it, although Speke was partially blind at this point so couldn't really) while Speke carried on to arrive at Lake Victoria in 1858 and claim it as the source of the Nile. This was disputed by Burton but eventually confirmed by Henry Stanley in his expedition during 1874-77.

These days Lake Rweru in Burundi, which feeds the Kagera River that ultimately ends in Lake Victoria, is generally considered the most distant source of the Nile River.

Answer: Willem Janzoon

Dutch explorer Janzoon made landfall in northern Queensland in 1606 and decided to call the land Nieu Zeland, although the name did not stick. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, he had been tasked with exploring the coast of New Guinea for economic opportunities and mistakenly thought that the land he had come across was part of New Guinea.

Answer: Roald Amundsen

Norwegian Amundsen and four colleagues arrived at the South Pole in 1911, some five weeks in advance of the ill-fated British expedition led by Captain Robert Scott. Amundsen had switched from an attempt on the North Pole after rival American explorers claimed to have achieved this in 1909.

Answer: Juan Sebastian Elcano

Ferdinand Magellan set off in 1519 as leader of a Spanish expedition of five ships and 270 men in order to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan died in the Philippines in 1521 during the Battle of Mactan. Elcano, originally a navigator with the expedition and one-time mutineer, completed the circumnavigation in 1522 with 17 others from the original crew.

Answer: Jacob Roggeveen

Sent by the Dutch West India Company to find Terra Australis, Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen was the first European recorded to have landed on Easter Island. This was on Easter Sunday 1722, hence the European name for the island (also known as Rapa Nui), and resulted in the deaths of about a dozen islanders. It is one of the remotest inhabited islands in the world.

Answer: Fletcher Christian

Originally sighted in 1767 by a British sloop, it was named after midshipman Robert Pitcairn. An error in calculating the position of the island made it difficult to find, but the mutineers on HMS Bounty succeeded. By the time the British authorities caught up with them on the island in 1814, only one remained and he was given amnesty.

The current population is mostly descended from the nine mutineers and the Tahitians that accompanied them.

Answer: Leif Eriksson

Two Icelandic sagas detail early explorations of the Atlantic seaboard of Canada by Norse Greenlanders. They called it Vinland (or wine land). Leif Eriksson's expedition appears to have been the first to land.

German cleric Adam of Bremen mentions Vinland in a 1073 text and the remains of a Norse settlement in Newfoundland (dating to between 990 and 1050) was found in the 1960s. Butternuts found at this site indicate that the Norse reached as far south as the St Lawrence river and New Brunswick, which is the northern limit for butternuts and wild grapes.

Answer: Augusto Bern

American Hiram Bingham is often credited with the re-discovery of Machu Picchu in 1911 however it appears that German businessman Augusto Berns, who had a sawmill in the area, plundered the archaeological site in 1867, as was the norm for the time.

Built between 1460 and 1470 by the Incan emperor Pachacuti, the citadel was abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquistadors a century later. The Spanish never found the place.