History · Geography

Historical Explorations and Expeditions

1,615 Questions

Historical explorations involve significant voyages, mountaineering feats, and expeditions that shaped global geography. This section includes questions on legendary explorers, naval routes, and major geographical discoveries. It is a crucial segment of general awareness for competitive exams.

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Historical Explorations and Expeditions Questions

Multiple choice

By saying that the British are famously outward looking, the Evening Standard means that they are

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 Working from outdated maps (which eventually got blown away by the wind), he plowed through the desert for nine agonising months.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.

  1. adventurous and brave, and love life outdoors

  2. interested in places and things outside one's own country or region

  3. broad-minded and willing to try out other modes of living

  4. ready to try to copy and adopt good things from all over the world

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

2 is the right choice as the lines - "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" indicate that british are interested in places &things outside one's own country or region.

Multiple choice

The number of firsts to Steger's credit includes:

I. the first dogsled crossing of Antarctica in 1989-90 II. the first to have hiked to both the poles in a single year
III. the first confirmed expedition to reach the North Pole travelling across the ice IV. the first to have walked 750 km from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole

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.

  1. I and II

  2. II and III

  3. I and III

  4. III and IV

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Correct Answer: I and III

Multiple choice

An untethered diver would most probably mean

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.

  1. the one who is not attached to the main boat by rope

  2. the one who is free to experiment and swim as he pleases

  3. a diver who is not hindered or tied down to one place

  4. a diver who is not bound to be with the others in his group

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

'Untethered' means "untied from a rope or chain". So, option 1 is correct.

Multiple choice

What the explorers do besides discovering include which of the following?

I. Examination and analysis II. Mapping III. Prodding IV. Colonisation

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.

  1. I and II

  2. II and III

  3. III and IV

  4. I, II and III

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Correct Answer: I, II and III

Multiple choice

The author traces the famous exploits of citizens from all of the following nations, 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.

  1. France

  2. America

  3. Germany

  4. Australia

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

4 is the right option as France, America & Germany are discussed in the passage, but there is no discussion about Australia.

Multiple choice

When Sylvia Earle uses the comparison like being in a cathedral with other worldly music, the highlighted words would refer to, in that order,

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.

  1. body, vibrations

  2. pacific, whales

  3. ocean, waves

  4. temple, music

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

In the passage, Sylvia Earle describes feeling 'her body resonate with the vibrations of communicating whales - like being in a cathedral with otherworldly music.' In this simile, 'body' corresponds to the cathedral (the physical space that experiences something), and 'vibrations' corresponds to otherworldly music (what is being experienced/felt). The comparison shows how her physical body felt the whale vibrations similar to how a body in a cathedral experiences music.

Multiple choice
  1. William S. Halstead

  2. Chinese team

  3. Mahatma Gandhi

  4. Peter Hillary

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund Hillary (the first person to climb Everest), became the first son of a mountaineer to climb Mount Everest. He achieved this in 1990, continuing his father's mountaineering legacy.

Multiple choice
  1. Nawang Gombu Sherpa

  2. Peter Hillary

  3. Sherpa Porters

  4. Chinesem team

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

Nawang Gombu Sherpa became the first person to climb Mount Everest twice when he summited on May 1, 1963 with the American expedition and again on May 20, 1965 with an Indian expedition. He was the nephew of Tenzing Norgay, the first to summit Everest with Edmund Hillary.

Multiple choice
  1. Chinese team

  2. Joe W. Kittinger

  3. Sherpa Porters

  4. Mahatma Gandhi

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The first recorded deaths on Mount Everest occurred during the 1922 British expedition when seven Sherpa porters were killed in an avalanche. This tragedy highlighted the extreme risks of high-altitude mountaineering and the vital role Sherpas play in Everest expeditions.

Multiple choice
  1. Sherpa Porters

  2. Chinese team

  3. Ben Abruzzoo and team in the double Engle

  4. Richard Branson and per Lindstrand

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

The Chinese team, led by Wang Fuzhou, Qu Yinhua, and Gongbu, achieved the first successful conquest of Everest via the North Ridge on May 25, 1960. This was a significant mountaineering achievement as the North Ridge route from Tibet was considered technically more difficult than the Southeast Ridge from Nepal.

Multiple choice
  1. William Shakespeare

  2. Ben Abruzzo and team in the double Eagle

  3. Joe .W Kittinger

  4. Chinese team

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Ben Abruzzo, along with Larry Newman and Ron Clark, became the first to cross the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon aboard the Double Eagle II in August 1978. Their journey began in Alaska and ended in France, taking approximately 137 hours to complete the historic crossing.

Multiple choice
  1. Billiboden

  2. Sachin

  3. John Player

  4. Steve Forest U.S

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Steve Fossett (misspelled as Forest) completed the first solo nonstop balloon flight around the world in 2002, flying the Spirit of Freedom balloon. Sachin is a cricketer, and the other names are not associated with this record.

Multiple choice
  1. Larry Newman and Maxie Anderson

  2. Bertrand Piccard Switzerland and Brain Jones

  3. Steve Forest

  4. Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand successfully completed the first transpacific hot-air balloon flight in 1991, flying from Japan to Arctic Canada. Piccard and Jones flew around the world, not transpacific.

Multiple choice
  1. Lala Amernath

  2. Charles Elwood Chuck Yeager

  3. Alexander Winton

  4. Diana Nyad

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than sound in 1947 when he piloted the Bell X-1 rocket plane. The other options include cricketers, race car drivers, and marathon swimmers unrelated to aviation.