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

William Baffin
b. c 1580; London (?), England
d. 1-23-1622; Qeshm, Ormus (Straits of Hormuz)

William Baffin, namesake of Baffin Bay and Baffin Island, explored the Arctic Circle, searching for the Northwest Passage.

Baffin also surveyed the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.

• William Baffin at Amazon

Vasco Núñez de Balboa
b. c 1475; Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz, Spain
d. 1-21-1519; Acla, Panama

Conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa founded the first permanent European settlement on the mainland of the Americas in present day Panama in 1510.

Balboa lead the first European expedition known to have reached, or seen, the Pacific Ocean from the New World, crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1513.

FYI - Balboa and Hernando de Soto were both born in the same small town.

• Vasco Nunez de Balboa: Explorer to the Pacific Ocean

Willem Barents
b. c. 1550; The Netherlands
d. 6-20-1597; on the Barents Sea

Willem Barents, Dutch explorer and navigator who searched for a northeast passage, lent his name to the part of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway and Russia which was formerly known as the Murman Sea in the Middle Ages. Barents died on his third voyage.

• The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595, and 1596)

Heinrich Barth
b. 1-16-1821; Hamburg, Germany
d. 11-25-1865; Berlin

Heinrich Barth travelled through Africa and the Near East because he was interested in the history and culture of the peoples, rather than the exploitation of them.

Barth studied with Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich von Schelling and Jakob Grimm, spoke Arabic, and his work was cited by Charles Darwin.

• Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa

George Bass
b. 1-30-1771; Aswarby, Lincolnshire, England
d. 1803; lost at sea

Naval surgeon and botanist George Bass, who brought a small boat with him on his assignment with the HMS Reliance, used his little Tom Thumb to explore Australia.

• George Bass

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta
b. 2-24-1304; Tangier, Morocco
d. c. 1368-1377; Morocco, the Black Plague

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, a Berber Sunni Islamic scholar and Qadi (judge), is best known as a traveler and explorer who wrote accounts of his journeys (including Hajj) that covered most of the known Islamic world, from present-day West Africa to Pakistan, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and China, over a period of almost thirty years. Ibn Battuta traveled some 73,000 miles, a distance greater than that of his predecessor and near-contemporary Marco Polo.

• The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century