Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer known to be the first European to have landed in North America (presumably in Newfoundland, Canada). It is believed that Leif was born about 970 in Iceland, the son of Erik the Red, a Norwegian explorer and...

Sophronius was the Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 until his death, and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before rising to the primacy of the see of Jerusalem, he was a monk and theologian who...

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsth...

Strabo was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher. Strabo is mostly famous for his 17-volume work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era. Although...

Zhang Qian (d. 113 BC) was a Chinese official and diplomat who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BC, during the time of the Han dynasty. He was the first official diplomat to bring back reliable in...

Pytheas was a Greek merchant, geographer and explorer from the Greek colony Massilia (today Marseille). He made a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe around 325 BC. He probably travelled around a considerable part of Great Britain,...

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC in Halicarnassus, Caria; Bodrum in modern Turkey. He is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his...