How Well Do You Know These Famous Female Explorers?

Gertrude Bell fell in love with the Middle East after visiting Iran with her uncle in 1892. She traveled widely throughout the region, getting involved in the politics of the area and earning the nickname “the female Lawrence of Arabia.” Because of the explorer’s familiarity with the area, she was part of the 1921 Cairo Conference, where she helped Winston Churchill establish Iraq’s borders.

British explorer Isabella Bird loved Colorado so much that she wrote “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains” about the state in 1879. In it, she details her life in the Rockies — including her 3,000-mile horseback ride on the mountains’ Front Range. The impressive ride wasn’t unusual for Bird, a well-known travel writer with a reputation for braving harsh conditions in order to explore the world around her.

On June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman became the world’s first Black woman and Native American person to earn a pilot’s license. The Chicagoan earned her international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Le Crotoy, France, as women were not allowed to be pilots in the United States at the time. Coleman was famous for performing flying stunts, such as figure eights and “loop-the-loops.”

When botanist Jeanne Baret joined a French expedition to circumvent the globe between 1766 and 1769, she became the first woman to sail around the world — though she didn’t know it at the time. She also didn’t sail as herself. Women weren’t allowed on French ships then, so she dressed as a man and used the name “Jean” Baret in order to accompany her partner, Philibert Commerson, on the expedition.

Emma Gatewood is often called the first woman to hike the entirety of the Appalachian Trail, but that’s not actually true — she was the first woman to hike it alone. It took her two tries, but she officially completed the roughly 2,100-mile hike in 1955 at 67 years old. “Grandma Gatewood,” as she was affectionately known, went on to complete many other treks, including all 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail.

From 1894 to 1895, cyclist Annie Cohen Kopchovsky — better known as Annie Londonderry — rode her bike around the world, starting and ending in Boston, Massachusetts. This feat earned her $10,000, which had been wagered by two businessmen who doubted a woman could rise to the occasion. Londonderry earned money along the way by making promotional appearances and selling advertising space on her bike.

In 1883, Eliza Scidmore had grown tired of her life writing local newspaper columns, so she bought a steamship ticket to Alaska. She continued writing for newspapers and magazines about her trip through Glacier Bay, and by 1885, she had published Alaska’s first travel guide. Today, the Scidmore Glacier in Glacier Bay is named after her, and she is credited with creating a new era of Alaskan tourism.

In Jules Verne’s 1873 novel “Around the World in Eighty Days,” protagonist Phileas Fogg attempts to travel around the globe in record time. Journalist Nellie Bly, on assignment from “New York World,” set out to beat that literary record. Starting in November 1889, she traversed the world in just over 72 days — beating her original goal of 75 days and proving to critics that gender was not an obstacle.

Annie Smith Peck didn’t begin mountain climbing until she was in her 40s, but she didn’t let that slow her down. In 1895, she summited the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, a climb that made her famous — but for the wrong reasons. She wasn’t celebrated for reaching the top; she was treated with disdain for climbing the mountain in pants. Peck continued climbing well into her 80s.

In 1932, aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The pioneering aviator went on to become the first pilot to fly solo from California to Hawaii, and also set new records in flight speed and altitude. Her determination to break gender barriers helped blaze a trail for generations of women.