History of Oceanography Flashcards
When is migration throughout the Southwestern Pacific thought to have begun?
2500 BC
When did the Polynesians successfully reach the Hawaiian Islands?
Probably between 450 to 600 AD
Near the equator which direction to the stars appear to travel on a north to south axis?
East to west
Who began to catalog marine organisms?
Aristotle
Who in 270 to 190 BC calculated the Earth’s circumference to be 40,250 km only 183 km off of the actual circumference?
Eratosthenes
Who created the first world atlas and established world boundaries?
Ptolemy
Where did the Vikings reach in 871?
Iceland
Where did Erik Thorvaldsen discover in 982?
Greenland
Who created the 1769 Franklin-Folger chart of the Gulf Stream current?
Benjamin Franklin
When was the US Naval Hydrographic Office set up?
1830
Lieutenant Matthew F. Maury produced the first what in 1847?
Wind and current charts of the North Atlantic
Who created the still generally accepted atoll formation theory?
Charles Darwin
Edward Forbes began a what around the British Isles and Mediterranean and Aegean Seas?
Systematic survey of Marine life
Who mistakenly theorized the environment below 550 m was without life?
Edward Forbes
Who tested theories on ocean current by freezing a vessel and floating with it?
Fridtjof Nansen
When was NOAA formed?
1970
When was the ten year International Decade of Ocean Exploration?
1970’s
Who was the first European explorer to reach India?
Vasco De Gama
Where was Vasco de Gama from?
Portugal
Who led the first expedition that successfully circumnavigated the globe?
Ferdinand Magellan
Who was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope?
Bartolomeu Dias
Who was the first European explorer to reach Central America?
Christopher Columbus
Where was Columbus from? Who sponsored his exploration?
Genoa, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain
What French explorer led 3 expeditions to Canada in search of the Northwest Passage?
Jacques Cartier
Who was the first European to set foot in Florida?
Ponce de Leon
Who was a Portuguese Prince and patron of explorers.
Henry the Navigator
Who developed a recognizable map of the Mediterranean region in 450 BCE?
Herodotus
Who published the first chart of the Gulf Stream? What year?
Benjamin Franklin, 1770
Who discovered the shipwrecked Titanic, and in what year?
Dr. Robert Ballard, 1985
Which man invented the first bathyscaphe in 1937?
Auguste Piccard
Which man took a bathyscaphe to the bottom of the Marianas Trench on January 23, 1960?
Jacques Piccard (Son of Auguste Piccard)
Which person is famous for her books Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us, which brought attention to DDT and other toxic chemicals?
Rachael Carson
Which submarine was the first to sink a warship?
H.L. Hunley. Part of Confederate Army.
What happened to the USS Thresher?
The submarine was traveling along a pychnocline and was caught by an internal wave. The wave pushed it down to depth and it imploded.
