Notable & Famous Explorers Posters “A...-”
for social studies teachers and home schoolers, theme decor in office.

Harriet Chalmers Adams in the Gobi Desert, Photographic Print

Harriet Chalmers Adams
b. 10-22-1875; Stockton, California
d. 7-17-1937; Nice, France

Explorer, writer and photographer Harriet Chalmers Adams traveled extensively in South America, Asia, and the South Pacific. Her accounts were published in the National Geographic magazine and she lectured extensively.

Chalmers-Adams was also the only female journalist allowed to visit the trenches in World War I while she was a correspondent for Harper's Magazine.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Photo Print

Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin
b. 1-20-1930; Glen Ridge, New Jersey

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the pilot of Apollo II, was the second man to step on the Moon, after Neil Armstrong as Michael Collins orbited in the command module, July, 1969.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Buzz Aldrin

Roald Amundsen
b. 7-16-1872; Norway
d. c 6-18-1928; plane crash during an attempted rescue

Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian polar explorer, led the first successful Antarctic expedition to the South Pole between 1910 and 1912. Amundsen and a co-explorer, Oscar Adolf Wisting, may also be the first persons to be at both North and South poles.

• The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910-1912

Roy Chapman Andrews
b. 1-26-1884; Beloit, Wisconsin
d. 3-11-1960; California

Roy Chapman Andrews, explorer, adventurer and naturalist, wrote “I was born to be an explorer. . . There was never any decision to make. I couldn't do anything else and be happy.”

Andrews was the first to discover fossilized dinosaur eggs in Mongolia; he was also became the director of the American Museum of Natural History after his beginning position was a janitor in the taxidermy department.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated in the Gobi Desert expedition with Andrews. And Andrews is supposedly the model for the Indiana Jones character.

• Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions

George Anson
b. 4-23-1696; Staffordshire, England
d. 6-6-1762; Moor Park, Hertfordshire, England

George Anson circumnavigated the globe in the disastrous 1740-44 voyage when only 188 men survived from the original 1,854.

John “Foul Weather Jack” Byron was one of the survivors.

Juan Bautista de Anza
b. 7-6/7-1736; Fronteras, Sonora, New Spain
d. 12-19-1788; Arizpe, Mexico

Juan Bautista de Anza was the leader of the first Spanish overland expedition to the Las Californias Province of New Spain in 1769. Las Californias was previously only sighted and claimed for the Spanish Crown from the sea by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542.

De Anza also named govenor of the Province of Nuevo Mexico, the present day state of New Mexico. In 1779 he led a punitive expedition against the Comanches, who had been raiding Taos, into present day Colorado, and Arizona.

De Anza was the first European to see the San Francisco Bay from land. The Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is named after him, as are numerous roads, streets, schools and buildings.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong Leaving for the Moon / LIFE Cover: July 25, 1969

Neil Armstrong
b. 8-5-1930; Wapakoneta, Ohio
d. 8-25-2012; Cincinnati, Ohio (complications coronary artery bypass surgery

Astronaut Neil Armstrong is best remembered as the first person to set foot on the Moon.

He began his astronaut career as a test pilot, Naval Aviator, and aerospace engineer. His first space flight was as command pilot of Gemini 8 (1966) with David Scott (completed the first docking of two spacecraft). His second and last space flight was as mission commander of Apollo 11, the first Lunar landing with Michael Collins & Buzz Aldrin of July, 1969.

Neil Armstrong quotes ~
• “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
• “That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
• “Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man's desire to understand.” from the Gongressional Record of 9-16-1969

John James Audubon
b. 4-26-1785; Haiti
d. 1-27-1851; NY

Audubon was an ornithologist (a zoologist specializing in birds), hunter, and artist known today for his illustrations and descriptions of the birds of North America.

Audubon was an explorer and careful observer, noting “... the nature of the place — whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs — generally gives hint as to its inhabitants.”

FYI ~ Audubon's method for portraying birds in the motions of hunting and feeding involved using wires to prop the birds he first killed with fine shot.

• Audubon's Birds of America