On a piercingly clear day in June 1325, a 21-year-old Moroccan from Tangier fastened his sandals, checked he had everything he needed, and said his goodbyes to family and friends. He was setting out on Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – a long an

Late in 1903, a handful of Nepalese yak herders strayed across the (unmarked) northern border. Unfortunately that incursion was into Tibet. They were met by a party of armed men who promptly dispersed their yaks. Not very friendly – but hardly a just

More than a century after the Black Death devastated Europe, the danger from plague had receded but was certainly not eradicated. Periodic disease outbreaks prompted many to flee their homes. So it was in the early 1480s that a Nuremberg-based doctor

When the French navigator and geographer Samuel de Champlain first set sail for New France (the area of North America colonised by France, some of which later became part of Canada) on 15 March 1603, it was the start of a love affair with North Ameri

In April 1768, two French ships, the Boudeuse and the Étoile, rode at anchor off the coast of Tahiti. Until that time, France had been unaware of the existence of the volcanic Polynesian island that later gained a reputation as an earthly paradise, b

In January 1817, a band of soldiers particularly ill-suited to the cold, breathless conditions of the high Andes tramped over lofty passes from western Argentina into Chile. Not only had they little or no experience of the effects of altitude, around

On the outer facade of the Palais de la Bourse in Marseille, France, a statue of a man stands high on a plinth. Flanked by columns and protected by a pedimental roof, his body is wrapped in layers of clothing as if to ward off the chill. His face is

In 1826 a ragtag party of eight men, injured and starving, stumbled into the lofty Hindu Kush north-east of Kabul. They had no map, no compass, no money, not even provisions. In fact, they had no clear destination: unlike most explorers, who aim to f

When Pliny the Younger set out from Rome to what’s now Turkey in the baking-hot summer of AD 111, he must have experienced at least a hint of trepidation. One trait rarely attributed to this Roman author is bravery. Today, he is best known for what h

On 10 June 1834, HMS Beagle emerged from the Strait of Magellan into the open Pacific Ocean. It was a moment of huge relief in particular for one long-suffering voyager, after facing dangers “enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, pe

In AD 368, the Roman emperor Valentinian I marched east from Augusta Treverorum (now Trier, in western Germany), the imperial capital of Roman Gaul, to campaign beyond the Rhine. Later that year he won a hard-fought victory against the Alamanni at th

It was a hot day in September 1854 when John Hanning Speke, a tall, fair-haired young former officer in the East India Company army, stepped ashore from a P&O steamship at Aden. He intended to cross from this British-held port on the southern coast o

“Although life is more complex than it was, complexity itself is not change” We must start with another question: what do we mean by ‘the world’? Some regions saw their most rapid development in the distant past – Mexico on the arrival of Cortés in 1

“Europe has always been culturally, religiously, and – most importantly – politically diverse” For most of the time since the dawn of human civilisation, Asia has been in the lead, economically and technologically. Exactly when the ascent of Europe a