Travel
Discover facts about travel. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Travel
Early Antarctic tourists visited working research stations
Argentina's 1958 Les Eclaireurs voyages took paying visitors south, with one trip carrying 98 passengers from Ushuaia to several scientific bases. Tourism…
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The sailor who crossed the world without knowing how to swim
He considered swimming pointless, reasoning that if he fell overboard in the Pacific, the skill would only prolong his death.
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How a blocked canal helped create supertankers
The 1956 blockage forced ships to detour around the Cape of Good Hope, making larger tankers a more economical way to carry cargo along the longer route.
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Krakatoa covered part of the sea in floating rock
The 1883 eruption spread pumice across the Sunda Strait. Its gas-filled structure lets the rock float, gathering into rafts that collide, grind together, and…
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The 1927 Mississippi flood helped push Black families north
The disaster destroyed homes and livelihoods, while discrimination shaped relief and the treatment of Black survivors. For many, returning meant returning to…
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A woman turned a bicycle journey into a global publicity tour
In 1894, Annie Kopchovsky left Boston on the journey that made her famous as Annie Londonderry. Sponsorship and storytelling helped finance and promote the…
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London's Thames Tunnel became an underground shopping trip
The tunnel was intended to carry goods beneath the Thames, but the vehicle ramps were never built. When it opened to pedestrians in 1843, visitors paid to…
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Paying a premium to take your personal car on a train
Launched in 1971, the Auto Train let travelers ride to Florida in sleeping cars while their station wagons traveled in an attached carrier.
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A tourist codebook could turn one strange word into a hotel booking
Thomas Cook's telegraphic code assigned compact words to longer requests. Zocolauro, for example, requested one single room at the specified hotel. When…
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The Karakoram Highway turned a three-day trek into a drive
The road connects Pakistan and China through the 15,400-foot Khunjerab Pass. A World Bank account describes the Hunza-to-Gilgit journey shrinking from three…
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The hostel movement began as a moral boot camp
Richard Schirrmann saw urban life as harmful and designed early hostels around fresh-air hikes, sobriety, and chores—not just cheap beds.
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An Alaskan ghost town lies on the route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
Once known as the “Dog Mushing Center of the World,” Knik is now essentially a ghost town. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race passes through the old Alaskan…
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Sailors wore gold earrings to pay for their funerals
In the 1800s, some sailors wore gold hoops so the jewelry could help pay for a proper burial if their bodies washed ashore after a dangerous voyage around…
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Single lane bridge ended island isolation
The island served as Portuguese East Africa’s colonial capital for more than four centuries, until a two-mile, single-lane bridge linked it to the mainland in…
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Saigon's famous rooftop escape wasn't at the embassy
The helicopter in Hubert van Es's 1975 photograph was collecting evacuees from 22 Gia Long Street, an apartment building used by CIA personnel. The line of…
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The travel guide that told tourists to sleep in bathtubs
Arthur Frommer's 1957 guide, Europe on 5 Dollars a Day, advised travelers to stay in cheap pensions, forgo private bathrooms, and even rent bathtubs to sleep…
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The ocean liner that became a floating bookstore
Built in 1914, the M.V. Doulos survived two world wars before becoming a floating Christian bookstore. Operated by a German charity, it spent three decades…
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When geopolitics closed the road to Kathmandu
In 1963, border tensions and shifting alliances shut down the original overland route from London to Kathmandu, years before the Hippie Trail became famous.
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Sven Hedin's desert crossing nearly ended in thirst
During his disastrous 1895 Taklamakan expedition, water ran out and members of the party died. Hedin eventually reached water after continuing with a…
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Thomas Manning reached Lhasa and still considered the trip a disappointment
He met the young Ninth Dalai Lama in 1811 and recorded a deeply affecting encounter. But his larger ambition was to reach inland China, and he was sent back…
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Britain watched the Hajj for political ideas as well as disease
Steamships and the Suez Canal brought more pilgrims together across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Late-nineteenth-century colonial officials worried both…
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Early desert pilots followed a line plowed in the sand
On the RAF’s Cairo–Baghdad route in the 1920s, a furrow across the featureless desert helped crews navigate between landing grounds. From above, the ground…
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Polar explorers could eat thousands of calories and still waste away
Dragging sledges for hours in extreme cold can consume more energy than the expedition's portable rations replace. Research on Scott's Antarctic journey found…
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Why Isabella Bird scandalized Victorian Britain
Isabella Bird rode astride, rather than side-saddle, through the American Rockies, wearing a modified dress. The press attacked her posture, and she…
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