Man and beast have explored the world for millennia, going in search of new places and experiences.

Here are ten of the most notable human and animal explorers.

1. Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, opening up a New World for Europe and marking the start of the colonisation of North America. Columbus was actually aiming for the East Indies, and insisted until the end of his life that he had landed in Asia.

2. Captain Cook

James Cook made the first European contact with the eastern coast of Australia in 1770, as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. His travels also took him to the Antarctic Circle and to Hawaii, where he was killed in 1779.

3. Marco Polo

From the Venetian Republic, Marco Polo traveled to Asia around 1271 and stayed for 24 years. He later wrote his travel book Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to countries such as India, China and Japan.

4. Captain Robert Scott

Scott was born in 1868 and led two expeditions to the Antarctic. He reached the South Pole in January 1912, but found he had been beaten there by Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Scott and his four fellow explorers died on the return journey.

5. Sir Edmund Hillary

New Zealander Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 with his sherpa Tenzing Norgay – the first two people known to have done so. He later founded the Himalayan Trust to help the Sherpa people of Nepal.

6. Jacques Cousteau

Born in France in 1910, Jacques Cousteau was an explorer of the seas and oceans. He studied all forms of life in water, pioneered marine conservation and also invented the aqualung.

7. Sir Francis Drake

Drake was an English explorer, pirate and politician of the Elizabethan era. He led the first English circumnavigation of the globe, from 1577—1580, and was known as ‘The Pirate’ to the Spanish, whose king Philip II offered a huge reward for his life.

8. Neil Armstrong

Known to everyone as the first human to step foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong coined the famous phrase: ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ when he stepped onto the lunar surface on 21 July 1969.

9. Laika

From the Russian meaning ‘barker’, Laika was a stray dog in Russia who became the first animal in space, launched in Sputnik II on 3 November 1957 and dying in orbit. It was not revealed until 2002 that she likely died soon after launch from overheating. A statue of Laika was unveiled in Russia in 2008, showing a dog standing on top of a rocket.

10. Sophie Tucker

Australian mutt Sophie Tucker fell overboard from the family yacht in Queensland in 2008, leading the family to think she’d drowned. But Sophie doggy-paddled six miles through shark-infested waters to land up on the tiny island of St Bees, where she hunted and ate wild baby goats to survive. Four months later, wildlife rangers managed to catch her, and dropped her home.

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