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
- Haitian Revolution (1791)
- Seven Years' War (1756)
- Latin American wars of independence (1808)
- Presidency of George Washington (1789)
- Industrial Revolution (1760)
- American Declaration of Independence (1776)
- American Revolution (1775)
- French Revolution (1789)
- Jacobite rising of 1745 (1745)
- Industrial Revolution begins (1760)