Captain Cook: History’s Greatest Explorer (TRIH eps 380-381)
1768 · Resource
Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook introduce a multi-episode focus on Captain James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. They trace Cook’s humble Yorkshire origins, apprenticeship, skill as a navigator and chartmaker, and rapid rise in the Royal Navy, including his surveying work on the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland. The hosts explain why Cook was chosen to command HMS Endeavour: the Royal Society and Admiralty wanted precise observations of the 1769 Transit of Venus and—secretly—geographical intellig...
On these timelines: The Rest Is History (podcast), Resources: Combined
Around 1768
- American Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Presidency of George Washington (1789)
- French Revolution (1789)
- Industrial Revolution (1760)
- Industrial Revolution begins (1760)
- American Revolution (1775)
- American Revolutionary War (1775)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769)
- Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)
- Watt's separate-condenser steam engine patent (1769)