Seven Wonders
Match each ancient wonder to the place it stood, in a free timed browser game. The list every schoolchild learns.
HistoryExplorers
Exploration history is mostly a story of ships, sponsors and luck — and of claims that other people then disputed. Below: the voyages worth remembering and the caveats worth keeping.
Choose your difficulty
Pick a level to start playing. You can switch at any time.
How to play
Read the achievement, then tap the explorer.
Tip: your progress and best score are saved in this browser only.
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HistoryWhat you are actually practicing
Each explorer is remembered for one voyage, and the voyage is what the question asks for. Columbus for the Americas, Magellan for the first circumnavigation, Zheng He for the Indian Ocean, Ibn Battuta for the long road across Africa and Asia.
The history is messier than the quiz: several of these voyages began as trade or pilgrimage, and several of the claims were disputed by the people who already lived there.
How the game works
You are shown an achievement and four names. Pick the explorer. A wrong pick reveals the answer immediately.
Easy uses the household names. Medium widens the set. Hard uses the full list, including the ones from outside Europe, which are the ones most lists skip.
The voyages worth knowing
Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492 for Spain, thinking he was near Asia.
Magellan led the first circumnavigation, completed by his crew after his death in the Philippines.
Zheng He sailed seven expeditions to the Indian Ocean for the Ming court, with enormous treasure fleets.
Ibn Battuta travelled from North Africa to Asia over roughly twenty-five years, mostly on foot.
Cook charted the Pacific, New Zealand and the Australian east coast.
Marco Polo described Asia for a century of European readers, whether or not every detail is exact.
Strategies that actually raise your score
Match the destination, not the era. "First to sail around the world" is a route, and only one person on the list took a route all the way round.
Use the sponsor as the clue. A Chinese fleet of treasure ships points to Zheng He; a royal Spanish contract points to Columbus; a chartered voyage with a Pacific chart points to Cook.
Note the disputed claims. "Reached the Americas" is a European framing; ask who was there first. The answers that make a question interesting are often the ones with a caveat attached.
Keep non-European names in rotation. Zheng He, Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo are the three most-omitted explorers, and all three appear here.