Historical Explorations and Expeditions

Which of the following events occurred last?

Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

JOHN CABOT

Which of the following statements are opinions and not facts?

1. John Cabot set sail from Ireland under English Royal sanction
2. John Cabot lived at the time of Columbus
3. John Cabot was one up on Columbus in his knowledge of Geography
4. John Cabot had a brave spirit of exploration

   Read the passage and answer the question that follows.

   JOHN CABOT

   Nobody remembers much about Giovanni Caboto, trader and mariner, lost at sea. He lived at the time of Columbus and was a citizen of the city-state of Venice in Italy. He traded in spices and was an expert mariner. Following Columbus, he wanted to find a north-western route to Asia, but he was one up on Columbus in his knowledge of Geography. He surmised that it would take a shorter time to reach Asia by a western sea route if he selected higher northern latitudes. In 1496, he set sail from Ireland under English royal sanction, but was forced to return after reaching Iceland. In 1497, he set sail again with a better ship, the Matthew, and ultimately succeeded in reaching Newfoundland. In 1498, he again set sail for America with a fleet of five ships, out of which one returned to harbor under distress. There have been no further news of the remaining four ships and John Cabot was marked as lost at sea. Everybody forgot about him for about a century, until the British remembered that when John Cabot had reached Newfoundland in 1497, he had done so, under a royal grant. The grant had allowed him to claim unknown lands for the English Crown. So, John Cabot, lost at sea, became important again for the English to stake their claims for the New World. Everybody remembers him for the English claims to North America, but we remember him for his brave spirit of exploration.

    

The word that evokes the comment "That doesn't include time in the shower from Sylvia Earle" is

Directions: Read the following passsage and answer the given question.

That's the way it is with explorers: any reason will do. They are, after all, no ordinary mortals. They are obsessed, fiercely competitive, driving themselves to reach beyond the last barrier into the untravelled world, or to do their predecessors one better, to live to tell the world what they have seen, and not incidentally, to enjoy triumph and glory.
Hardly any place on the surface of the earth remains to be discovered, let alone mapped, prodded, examined and analysed, yet explorers persist in pushing at frontiers. Italy's Reinhold Messner, 48, the first man ever to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-plus-metre peaks - he did it without using oxygen equipment - also made the first solo oxygen-free ascent of Mount Everest and walked across Antarctica. Germany's Arved Fuchs, 39, hiked to both Poles in a single year, rounded Cape Horn in a collapsible boat, explored Greenland and the Canadian Arctic - to name only a few of his exploits.
France's Philippe Frey, 35, courted death when he travelled 9,000 km across the Sahara from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean in 1991. Working from outdated maps (which eventually got blown away by the wind), he plowed through the desert for nine agonising months. One after another, the wells that were marked on the map turned out dry. He had two camels; his water supply was down to five litres. Just as he was preparing to slit a camel's throat to drink its blood and stomach juices, two nomads appeared and directed him to an unmarked well 20 km away. Last year, the Club des Explorateurs et Voyageurs awarded Frey its Prix Liotard for exploration.
Among Americans, the leading explorer is Will Steger, 48, for whom happiness is going into an area that's never been visited before, an area where the sounds and the sights are foreign to human eyes. In 1986 Steger led the first confirmed expedition to reach the North Pole by traveling across the ice, and in 1989-90 made the first dogsled crossing of Antarctica. Typically, he is almost blasé when he described adversity. People are side-tracked by the suffering, by the cold, he says. it's fascinating for them the idea of going to the bathroom outdoors at 500 below zero. They imagine the hardships of cold, but it's not really much. It's just physical, temporary. But if you make a mistake, you die.
A fellow Minneston, schoolteacher Ann Bancroft, 37, is the first woman ever to reach the North Pole by dogsled (with Steger in 1986). Last November she set out with three other women to ski across Antarctica, reached the South Pole, then had to withdraw in mid-January when weather delays upset their schedule.
Californian Sylvia Earle, 57, prefers to study the last truly unexplored region on earth: the bottom of the sea. A marine biologist, she has clocked 6,000 hours underwater (That doesn't include time in the shower, she jokes) and holds the record for reaching the greatest depth - 381 m - ever attained by an untethered diver.
She has swum in the Indian Ocean with thousands of bioluminescent fish, dived in water so clear that from 30 m below the surface she could see the moon and stars; in the Pacific she has felt her body resonate with the vibrations of communicating whales- like being in a cathedral with otherworldly music. Most of the planet, she says, has yet to be explored. In the deep sea, less than one-tenth of 1% has even been looked at, and much of it has been mapped only in the most general way. Earle hopes to build a high-tech underwater craft that will take her to 11,000 m, the ocean's deepest depths.
It is the British, following centuries of tradition, who hold a special place in the chronicles of spectacular explorations. In a half-serious lexicon of Great British Things We Can Be Proud Of, London's Evening Standard recently listed Outwardness. From Sloaney grannies batting through the Hindu Kush in hire cars to lone seafarers circumnavigating the globe in sherry casks, the British are famously outward-looking.
Five hundred expeditions of dazzling variety and frequently exotic destinations, in fact, leave Britain's shores every year. Some are supported by public or private subscription, some by the Royal Geographical Society, others by sympathetic corporations.
They are costly investments and usually lose money. Britain's Robert Swan, who raised $3.5 million for a journey to the South Pole in 1984, retraced Robert Scott's 1911-12, 1,450-km route unassisted and in 1989 walked the 750-km from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole. Swan is still more than $ 100,000 in debt; his only consolation is that some of his famous predecessors - notably Sir Ernest Shackleton - died penniless.

The reasons why explorers do what they do, include all of the following, except

Directions: Read the following passsage and answer the given question.

That's the way it is with explorers: any reason will do. They are, after all, no ordinary mortals. They are obsessed, fiercely competitive, driving themselves to reach beyond the last barrier into the untravelled world, or to do their predecessors one better, to live to tell the world what they have seen, and not incidentally, to enjoy triumph and glory.
Hardly any place on the surface of the earth remains to be discovered, let alone mapped, prodded, examined and analysed, yet explorers persist in pushing at frontiers. Italy's Reinhold Messner, 48, the first man ever to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-plus-metre peaks - he did it without using oxygen equipment - also made the first solo oxygen-free ascent of Mount Everest and walked across Antarctica. Germany's Arved Fuchs, 39, hiked to both Poles in a single year, rounded Cape Horn in a collapsible boat, explored Greenland and the Canadian Arctic - to name only a few of his exploits.
France's Philippe Frey, 35, courted death when he travelled 9,000 km across the Sahara from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean in 1991. Working from outdated maps (which eventually got blown away by the wind), he plowed through the desert for nine agonising months. One after another, the wells that were marked on the map turned out dry. He had two camels; his water supply was down to five litres. Just as he was preparing to slit a camel's throat to drink its blood and stomach juices, two nomads appeared and directed him to an unmarked well 20 km away. Last year, the Club des Explorateurs et Voyageurs awarded Frey its Prix Liotard for exploration.
Among Americans, the leading explorer is Will Steger, 48, for whom happiness is going into an area that's never been visited before, an area where the sounds and the sights are foreign to human eyes. In 1986 Steger led the first confirmed expedition to reach the North Pole by traveling across the ice, and in 1989-90 made the first dogsled crossing of Antarctica. Typically, he is almost blasé when he described adversity. People are side-tracked by the suffering, by the cold, he says. it's fascinating for them the idea of going to the bathroom outdoors at 500 below zero. They imagine the hardships of cold, but it's not really much. It's just physical, temporary. But if you make a mistake, you die.
A fellow Minneston, schoolteacher Ann Bancroft, 37, is the first woman ever to reach the North Pole by dogsled (with Steger in 1986). Last November she set out with three other women to ski across Antarctica, reached the South Pole, then had to withdraw in mid-January when weather delays upset their schedule.
Californian Sylvia Earle, 57, prefers to study the last truly unexplored region on earth: the bottom of the sea. A marine biologist, she has clocked 6,000 hours underwater (That doesn't include time in the shower, she jokes) and holds the record for reaching the greatest depth - 381 m - ever attained by an untethered diver.
She has swum in the Indian Ocean with thousands of bioluminescent fish, dived in water so clear that from 30 m below the surface she could see the moon and stars; in the Pacific she has felt her body resonate with the vibrations of communicating whales- like being in a cathedral with otherworldly music. Most of the planet, she says, has yet to be explored. In the deep sea, less than one-tenth of 1% has even been looked at, and much of it has been mapped only in the most general way. Earle hopes to build a high-tech underwater craft that will take her to 11,000 m, the ocean's deepest depths.
It is the British, following centuries of tradition, who hold a special place in the chronicles of spectacular explorations. In a half-serious lexicon of Great British Things We Can Be Proud Of, London's Evening Standard recently listed Outwardness. From Sloaney grannies batting through the Hindu Kush in hire cars to lone seafarers circumnavigating the globe in sherry casks, the British are famously outward-looking.
Five hundred expeditions of dazzling variety and frequently exotic destinations, in fact, leave Britain's shores every year. Some are supported by public or private subscription, some by the Royal Geographical Society, others by sympathetic corporations.
They are costly investments and usually lose money. Britain's Robert Swan, who raised $3.5 million for a journey to the South Pole in 1984, retraced Robert Scott's 1911-12, 1,450-km route unassisted and in 1989 walked the 750-km from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole. Swan is still more than $ 100,000 in debt; his only consolation is that some of his famous predecessors - notably Sir Ernest Shackleton - died penniless.