History
The Great Trans-Saharan Railway Disaster
Dreamers hoped that building a Trans-Saharan Railway would return...
The Matterhorn, 1865: Whymper Makes the First Ascent, Then Hurls Rocks at His Rivals Below
The first ascent of the Matterhorn marked the end...
How a Con Man Stranded 300 Italians on a Pacific Island
In the summer of 1880, dozens of impoverished families...
An Inuit Shaman and a Great Migration that Ended in Murder and Cannibalism
The Qitdlarssuaq story has not yet been made into...
Why Writers Shouldn’t Try to Be Farmers: A Brief History of Failed Utopias
As soon as we started leaving the farm for...
The Untold Survival Story of the 15th-Century Venetians Shipwrecked on an Arctic Island
Pietro Querini sailed from Crete in 1431, bound for...
Interactive Map Shows Four Centuries of Arctic Exploration
A new project from a glacial scientist and historical...
Roland Huntford, Polar History Author, Has Died
Roland Huntford, author of polar histories and biographies, passed...
An Unknown Survival Classic: How Eight Men Survived an Arctic Overwintering in 1630
In 1630, eight little-known Englishmen were separated from their...
He’s the Busiest Traveler You’ve Never Heard Of
An eccentric and artist, Arnold Henry Savage Landor won...
The Polar Explorer Who May Have Written ‘The Magic Flute’
On September 30, 1791, at Vienna's Theater auf der...
Felix Nadar, Balloonist and First Aerial Photographer
The first person to take both aerial and subterranean...
An Update on the Supposed Discovery of Nefertiti’s Tomb
Billed as the "find of the century," Egyptologists announced...
Looking Back: Triumph and Tragedy on Kangchenjunga, 1995
By the autumn of 1995, Kangchenjunga -- the world's...
William Buckley, the Australian Convict Adopted by Aboriginals
In Australia, when they say "you’ve got Buckley’s chance,"...
Dispatches from Terror Camp, the Online Polar Fan Conference
Last weekend, around 1,800 other registrants and I attended...
The 1853 Dinner That First Popularized Dinosaurs
Like many children, I was devoted to dinosaurs. Their...
Reluctant Historians: How the Past Can Seduce Adventure Travelers
Those who ski from Hercules Inlet to the South...
Geoffrey Winthrop Young: The Man Who Changed British Climbing
Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958), British climber, poet, and author...
Fraud or Find? What We Know About Crete’s Mysterious Phaistos Disk
In early July of 1908, Luigi Pernier was heading...
