Great Explorers

Long before satellites mapped every coastline, a small number of people sailed off the edge of what was known and came back with a larger world. This round follows the most famous of them — Magellan, Columbus, da Gama, Amundsen, Hillary — and the voyages that filled in the blanks on the map. The history is more tangled than the headlines suggest, and the explanations lean into that: Magellan led the first circumnavigation but did not survive it, and the credit for finishing the journey belongs to Elcano. Knowing those wrinkles is what separates a memorised name from a real understanding. It is a medium round that rewards general curiosity rather than specialist knowledge, and it pairs naturally with our geography quizzes. Read the notes after each answer; the stories of how these journeys actually unfolded — the deaths, the rivalries, the sheer nerve involved — are far more gripping than any single date.