James Cook was the son of a farm laborer who taught himself navigation, joined the British Royal Navy, and ended up commanding three of the most important sea voyages in history. On his first voyage in 1769, he was sent to the Pacific to watch the planet Venus cross in front of the Sun.
That was only the start. Over three voyages, Cook and his crew mapped the coastlines of New Zealand, sailed up the eastern coast of Australia (where they hit the Great Barrier Reef and nearly sank), and pushed further south than any ship had ever gone, crossing the Antarctic Circle in 1773.
His careful charts and observations changed European maps of the world. Sadly, his third voyage ended in tragedy: on a stopover in Hawaii in 1779, a misunderstanding turned into a fight on the beach and Cook was killed. His maps were so accurate, though, that some were still being used by sailors a century later.
