Explorers Quiz

Please write the complete answer for each question in your social studies notebook.

Question 1:
Which of these islands is generally considered to be the island of San Salvador, where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492?

  1. Watling's Island
  2. Cat Island
  3. Grand Turk

Question 2:
Sent on a rescue mission to Africa to find the explorer David Livingstone, journalist Henry Morton Stanley eventually tracked him down and issued the famous greeting, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Later Stanley continued in Livingstone's footsteps, on a quest to find what?

  1. Timbuktu
  2. The source of the Nile
  3. The Horn of Africa

Question 3:
Who was the first mountain climber to summit all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter peaks without the use of supplemental oxygen?

  1. Tenzing Norgay
  2. Reinhold Messner
  3. David Breashears

Question 4:
The epitome of the American frontiersman, this folk hero took a break from fighting battles, claiming new territory, and embellishing his own mythic persona to serve two terms in the U.S. Congress.

  1. Davy Crockett
  2. Kit Carson
  3. Daniel Boone

Question 5:
What adventurer dropped out of Amherst College, went on an expedition bordering the Arctic Circle, and returned to become a pioneer the frozen food industry?

  1. Leo "Green Giant" Burnett
  2. Vernon B. Stouffer
  3. Clarence Birdseye

Question 6:
Which of these men became the first to climb the north face of the Eiger, managed to escape from a POW camp, was one of the first Westerners to enter the forbidden kingdom of Tibet, and became a life-long friend of the Dalai Lama?

  1. Robert Thurman
  2. Heinrich Harrar
  3. Hermann Buhl

Question 7:
The body found on Mount Everest in May 1999 was that of

  1. Edmund Hillary
  2. George Mallory
  3. Andrew Irvine

Question 8:
Each of these three extraordinary medieval/Renaissance travelers was captured and imprisoned for a time. But which one was seized by pirates and presented as a slave to Pope Leo X?

  1. Leo Africanus
  2. Marco Polo
  3. Ibn Batuta

Question 9:
Which of these writers and African adventurers was also a professional pilot?

  1. Mary Leakey
  2. Karen Blixen
  3. Beryl Markham

Question 10:
After Frederick Cook was discredited as the first person to reach the North Pole, which explorer was credited? (That is, if we ignore evidence from the 1990s that he too may have fabricated his claim.)

  1. Robert Peary
  2. Henry Hudson
  3. Richard Byrd

Question 11:
At the other end of the world, Captain Robert Scott raced to become the first person to reach the South Pole. Unfortunately, he was thirty-five days too late, and on the return journey he and his entire expedition perished. Who beat him to the South Pole?

  1. Roald Amundsen
  2. Ernest Shackelton
  3. James Cook