• Although Sir Francis Drake was declared a hero for being the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth, accomplished in 1577-1580, this explorer was one of the world’s leading privateers, with a reputation of piracy against Spanish ships and possessions. Queen Elizabeth I granted Drake a privateer’s commission, giving him the right to plunder the Spanish ports of the Caribbean. He also participated in the slave trade as early as 1567. Drake sailed up the western coast of North America, as far north as Vancouver, Canada, entering San Francisco Bay on the return south, claiming the area for Queen Elizabeth. When he returned to England with an enormous amount of Spanish treasure, he was knighted by the Queen.
• The Peruvian site of Machu Picchu had long been forgotten except by a small indigenous population living in the area. This citadel of palaces, plazas, temples, and residences was so isolated, it had never been found by Peru’s Spanish conquerors during their conquest of the area. In 1911, a professor of South American history at Yale University named Hiram Bingham III organized an expedition to search for lost Inca cities. He discovered the 15th-century city on a 7,970-ft (2430-m) ridge high in the Peruvian Andes Mountains. Bingham believed the site to be a religious shrine and training center for religious leaders. However, modern archaeologists now believe that Machu Picchu, built around 1450 by the Inca emperor, served as a summer retreat for royal leaders and their associates. Following the publication of his discovery, Bingham went on to serve as Connecticut’s lieutenant governor, governor, and U.S. Senator.
• In 1911, 39-year-old Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole. He had set out from Norway in August of 1910 with four men, 52 dogs, and four sleds, and arrived in Antarctica in January, 1911. The crew spent the next 10 months preparing for the trip to the Pole, fattening the dogs and organizing the sleds. The five men arrived at the Pole on December 14. Amundsen was no stranger to adventure. At 25, he had been part of an Antarctic expedition that was the first to survive a winter there, although not by choice. Their ship was firmly frozen in 7 feet (2.1 m) of ice for 13 months, when it was finally able to break free. At 31, Amundsen commanded the expedition that was the first to discover the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, a journey of three years.
• King Tut’s tomb was almost overlooked by British archaeologist Howard Carter and his crew. Carter had been working in Egypt’s Valley of Kings for years, living in a group of huts in the area. While clearing away huts that had been abandoned a few years earlier, the group’s young water boy tripped on a stone, one that was actually the top of a flight of steps cut into the underlying rock. When the steps were dug out, a doorway was found, stamped with hieroglyphics. After three weeks of excavation, a small opening had been made in the corner of the doorway, and by the light of a candle, the crew were able to see the gold and other priceless treasures inside. It took Carter and his associates nearly ten years to evaluate and catalog the thousands of items found within.
