Where famous explorers, aviators and astronauts grew up and lived

Amelia Earhart1897–1908

📍 Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, 223 North Terrace Street, Atchison, KS 66002, USA

I was born in July 1897 in the south-west bedroom of my grandparents' house in Atchison, Kansas, a tall Gothic Revival house that my grandfather, Judge Alfred Otis, had built in 1861 on a…

Buzz Aldrin1930–1947

📍 Montclair, NJ 07042, USA

Buzz Aldrin was born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. in January 1930 and grew up in a Craftsman-style house in the Oakcroft neighbourhood of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, a leafy commuter town west…

Captain James Cook1746–1749

📍 Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Grape Lane, Whitby YO22 4BA, UK

I was a farm labourer's son from Marton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and at sixteen I was sent to the fishing village of Staithes as a shop boy for a grocer and haberdasher, William…

Charles Lindbergh1906–1920

📍 Charles A. Lindbergh Historic Site, 1620 Lindbergh Drive South, Little Falls, MN 56345, USA

My father, a lawyer and later a congressman, bought a farm on the bluffs above the Mississippi River just south of Little Falls, Minnesota, before I was born. Our first house there burned…

Christopher Columbus1455–1470

📍 Casa di Cristoforo Colombo, Vico Dritto di Ponticello, 16121 Genoa, Italy

Between the ages of about four and nineteen I lived with my family in a narrow house just outside the Porta Soprana, the twin-towered medieval gate of Genoa. On the ground floor was the…

David Livingstone1813–1836

📍 David Livingstone Birthplace, 165 Station Road, Blantyre G72 9BY, UK

I was born in March 1813 in Shuttle Row, a tenement block built for workers at the Blantyre cotton mills on the River Clyde, south-east of Glasgow. Twenty-four families lived in the…

Ernest Shackleton1874–1880

📍 Kilkea House, Kilkea, Co. Kildare, Ireland

I was born in February 1874 at Kilkea House, a farmhouse in the rolling country of south County Kildare, five miles from Athy, the second child and eldest son in what would become a large…

Ferdinand Magellan1480–1492

📍 Sabrosa, Vila Real, Portugal

I was born around 1480 in northern Portugal, into a family of minor nobility, the Magalhães. Tradition and many historians place my birth in Sabrosa, a granite village in the hills of…

Fridtjof Nansen1901–1930

📍 Polhøgda, 1327 Lysaker, Bærum, Norway

I built Polhøgda — the High Meadow — on the Lysaker fjord outside Oslo in 1901, and it was my home for the rest of my life. I had returned from the Fram expedition across the Arctic Ocean…

Jacques Cousteau1936–1950

📍 Sanary-sur-Mer, Var, France

I was a sickly child, born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux, and doctors told me to swim for my health, so I did, and I never stopped. I loved machines and films too, and bought my…

James Cameron1954–1971

📍 Chippawa, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, in August 1954 and grew up in Chippawa, a historic village on the Niagara River just above the falls, now part of the city of Niagara Falls…

Jean Batten

📍 Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

I was born in Rotorua and grew up breathing the sulphur-tinged air and the particular freedom that comes from being raised in a place that feels slightly apart from the world. My mother…

Marco Polo1275–1292

📍 Kublai Khan Palace, Beijing, China

I spent seventeen years in the service of Kublai Khan, and for much of that time I lived within his great palace in Khanbaliq — the city we now call Beijing. Nothing I had seen in Venice or…

Neil Armstrong1944–1947

📍 Wapakoneta, OH 45895, USA

My father was a state auditor, so we moved around Ohio a great deal when I was small, through more than a dozen towns. In 1944, when I was thirteen, we settled in Wapakoneta, my parents'…

Orville Wright1871–1914

📍 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, OH 45402, USA

I was born in August 1871 in this narrow white house at 7 Hawthorn Street, on the west side of Dayton, Ohio. My father, Milton, was a bishop in the United Brethren Church whose work took us…

Richard Pearse1898–1911

📍 Waitohi, near Temuka, South Canterbury, New Zealand

I grew up on my family's farm at Waitohi, near Temuka in South Canterbury, the fourth of nine children of a Cornish-born farmer. I was always more interested in machines than in farming. I…

Roald Amundsen1908–1928

📍 Uranienborg, Roald Amundsens vei 192, 1420 Svartskog, Norway

I was born in Borge, near Fredrikstad, into a family of shipowners and sea captains, and when I was a few months old we moved to Christiania, now Oslo, where I grew up on Uranienborgveien…

Robert Falcon Scott1868–1881

📍 Stoke Damerel, Plymouth PL3, UK

I was born in June 1868 at Outlands, a small country house set in gardens at Stoke Damerel, on the edge of Devonport, then just outside Plymouth. My parents called me Con, and I was the…

Sally Ride1951–1968

📍 Encino, Los Angeles, CA 91436, USA

I was born in May 1951 and grew up in Encino, a quiet suburb in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, the older of two daughters of Dale and Joyce Ride. My father taught political science…

Sir Edmund Hillary

📍 Tuakau, South Auckland, New Zealand

I grew up in Tuakau, south of Auckland, where my father ran a beekeeping business and a small newspaper. Our home was simple but full of ambition and hard work. From those early years I…

Valentina Tereshkova1937–1945

📍 Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia

Valentina Tereshkova was born in March 1937 in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a small village of wooden houses on the banks of the Volga in the Yaroslavl region, north-east of Moscow. Her father…

Wilbur Wright1867–1868

📍 Wilbur Wright Birthplace, near Millville, Henry County, IN 47346, USA

I was born on 16 April 1867 on a small farm in Henry County, Indiana, a few miles from the village of Millville, the third son of Milton and Susan Wright. My father had bought the five-acre…

Yuri Gagarin1945–1951

📍 Gagarin (Gzhatsk), Smolensk Oblast, Russia

I grew up in the village of Klushino in the Smolensk region, the third of four children. My father, Aleksey, was a carpenter and my mother, Anna, worked as a milkmaid on the collective…