The Challenger Expedition was a scientific voyage around the world, undertaken by the Royal Navy ship HMS Challenger, which had been converted into a floating laboratory, under the scientific direction of the Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson. Over about three and a half years the crew sailed tens of thousands of nautical miles, taking soundings, dredging the sea floor, measuring temperatures and collecting water and specimens at hundreds of stations. They found thousands of previously unknown marine species, and sounded the deepest known point of the oceans in the Mariana Trench. The results were published in fifty volumes over two decades, and the expedition is regarded as the foundation of modern oceanography.
Before and after
- 15 August 1872Birth of Aurobindo Ghosh
- 30 November 1872First match of the England men's national association football team
- 30 November 1872The first international football match is played
- 3 December 1872George Smith reads the Babylonian flood story
- from 7 December 1872 to 26 May 1876Challenger Expedition
- 1873Invention of electrical generator
- 1873Founding of Swiss Stock Exchange
- 9 January 1873Death of Napoleon III
- 20 January 1873Birth of Johannes V. Jensen
More in Exploration & discovery
- from 14 May 1804 to 23 September 1806Lewis and Clark Expedition
- from 3 July 1815 to 3 August 1818Russian Rurik Expedition
- from 25 October 1859 to 1 January 1862Prussian expedition to East Asia (1859-1862)
- from 14 November 1907 to 30 November 19071907 Sub-Antarctic Islands Scientific Expedition
- from 3 June 1910 to 30 January 1912Amundsen's South Pole expedition
- 14 December 1911Amundsen reaches the South Pole
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.