PreviousDays✦THE WIKI
← All historyTHE ARCHIVE · 4 STORIES

1500–1799

New horizons. Changing worlds.

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MOMENTS FROM THIS ERA

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4 illustrated stories · growing daily
An aeronaut descends in a wicker basket beneath a silk parachute above autumnal Paris.Cars & transport

André-Jacques Garnerin’s parachute descent over Paris

On 22 October 1797, Garnerin descended beneath a silk parachute over Paris. An eyewitness described him riding back to the park on horseback.

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A decorated eighteenth-century balloon carries two people above Parisian rooftops.Cars & transport

The first untethered human balloon flight over Paris, 1783

On 21 November 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes, traveled above Paris in a Montgolfier hot-air balloon. The flight demonstrated that people could remain aloft and land safely without a tether connecting their craft to the ground.

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Dutch sailors look across open sea toward distant mountains from the deck of a seventeenth-century sailing ship.Cars & transport

Abel Tasman’s first recorded sighting of New Zealand on 13 December 1642

Abel Tasman’s expedition sighted New Zealand’s South Island on 13 December 1642. The first known European sighting added an inhabited Polynesian land to Dutch geographical knowledge, without making its people or earlier navigators any less central to its history.

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A weathered sixteenth-century sailing ship approaches a low estuary shoreline.Cars & transport

Victoria returns to Sanlúcar after the first circumnavigation

Victoria reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 6 September 1522 under Juan Sebastián Elcano. The ship's arrival completed the first recorded voyage around the world and joined ocean crossings into one continuous route.

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