Once around the world
Ferdinand Magellan, who set out on what became the first circumnavigation of the world, died 500 years ago. Since then people have been trying to do the same in every conceivable way, including on foot.
A posthumous hero
The Victoria was en route in the name of the Spanish crown for two years, 11 months and two weeks. The ship was one of five with which captain Ferdinand Magellan set off in September 1519 from the Spanish port of Sanlucar. Magellan didn't survive to return in 1522, nor did most of the 244 crew members, but they remain unforgotten as pioneers of circumnavigation.
Epoch-making discovery
Magellan's mission: to find a western route to the Spice Islands in Indonesia, an alternative to the dangerous sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. At the southern tip of South America, he discovered an inconspicuous strait. It was the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Ships still navigate it and, especially for Chile, it provides direct access to the Atlantic.
Around the world in 80 days
In his novel "Around the World in 80 Days," French author Jules Verne sent eccentric gentleman Phileas Fogg on a race around the world. Nowadays whoever wins the Jules Verne Trophy is the first to circumnavigate the world in a sailboat. In this race, teams compete against each other, in contrast to the Vendee Globe.
The world's hardest race
The best world's solo sailors compete at the Vendee Globe, an unassisted non-stop yacht race that has been held since 1989. Every four years it starts and ends in Les Sables-d'Olonne on the French Atlantic coast. Because its route includes the Southern Ocean, the race is considered the world's hardest. The victor is celebrated as a hero upon arrival. So far no woman has been among the winners.
The world's fastest woman
British sailor Ellen MacArthur came second at the Vendee Globe, but she wanted more: to sail non-stop around the world faster than anyone else. On November 28, 2004, she set out on her 22.9-meter trimaran B&Q. Her time of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds is the world record for single-handed global circumnavigation. For three years she was the world's fastest solo yachtswoman.
Around the world in a solar-powered boat
Circumnavigation brings people together who want to push the limits of what is possible. The Turanor PlanetSolar is the result of cooperation between Swiss, Germans and New Zealanders. Between 2010 and 2012 their boat, powered entirely by solar energy, returned to port after circumnavigating the globe in 585 days. Its roof consists of 38,000 photovoltaic cells.
Taking to the skies with solar energy
Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist Bertrand Piccard's Solar Impulse is the solar-powered airborne variation. In March 2015 he began a circumnavigation that ended in July 2016 in Abu Dhabi after a nine-month hiatus. His motivation was not the desire to break records but his vision of an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient aircraft. It took more than 10 years to develop the Solar Impulse.
Around the world in a hot-air balloon
US multimillionaire Steve Fossett, who died in 2007, poses here in front of his balloon, the Bud Light Spirit of Freedom, after a soft landing in the Australian outback in July 2002. He took 14 days to fly around the world alone, beating the record of his rival Bertrand Piccard, who had made the first non-stop balloon flight around the world three years previously in 19 days, but with a crewmate.
A pioneer in a vintage car
In circumnavigating the globe, it is considered necessary to cross all the meridians of longitude. That pushes people and vehicles to their limits. Berliner Heidi Hetzer, who died in 2019, took on the challenge at the age of 79 in a 1930 Hudson Great Eight. She was following in the tracks of Clärenore Stinnes, the first person to travel around the world in an automobile, from 1927 to 1929.
Outrunning the world
Serge Roetheli, born in 1955, is an indefatigable mountain guide and athlete. He jogged an incredible 40,000 kilometers around the world, demolishing 64 pairs of shoes in the process. His wife Nicole accompanied him on a motorcycle. The journey took the pair five years, returning to Switzerland in April 2005. On their way they raised $400,000 (€356,000) in donations.
From Saalfeld around the world
The Berlin Wall had just come down in 1989 when two friends, Axel Brümmer and Peter Glöckner got on their bikes. On June 29, 1990, they set off from the town of Saalfeld in Thuringia. 80,000 kilometers, 50 countries and five years later, the cyclists returned, much richer in experience. They had started out in what was the communist German Democratic Republic and came home to a reunified Germany.