Brian McNally, age 9, of Ardmore, Okla., for his question:
WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO GO AROUND THE WORLD?
Getting from point A to point B has always been a challenge to man. Ever since the wheel was invented in the eastern Mediterranean region about 2700 B.C., transportation has improved from one age to another. The Chinese came up with the first system of roads in 200 B.C. And by the year A.D. 1000 explorers and adventurers were heading out for the open seas.
Travel to faraway locations received a boost in 1450 when the Portuguese invented the three masted ship which made it easier for sailors to travel against the wind.
Receiving credit for being the leader of the first expedition that sailed around the earth is a Portuguese navigator by the name of Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan is considered by man to be the greatest navigator who ever lived.
Magellan sailed for the king of Spain from Sanlucar de Barrameda on Sept. 20, 1519, and arrived at the bay of Rio de Janeiro in South America three months later. He traveled south and passed through the Strait of Magellan into the western ocean, which he named Pacific.
The world's first around the world trip continued with Magellan slowly continuing west with some time spent in the South Pacific's Mariana Islands.
Reaching the island of Cebu in the southern Philippines, Magellan estimated tht he had passed the longitude of the East Indies and that the way was open to him to return to Spain through the Indian Ocean by continuing to sail west.
But on April 27, 1521, Magellan was cut down by native spears and cutlasses and died. It was up to his crew to complete the voyage without him.
Magellan's ships traveled through the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. The ship returned to Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain on Sept. 6, 1522. The first around the world voyage had taken two weeks less than three years to complete.
As the years passed, the trip took less time. An American newspaper reporter named Nellie Bly made a record trip around the world in 1890 in 72 days, six hours and 11 minutes. And in 1924, four U.S. Army airplanes circled the earth in 15 days, three hours and seven minutes.
An American aviator named Wiley Post in 1933 made the first solo flight around the world in seven days, 18 hours and 49 minutes.
A U.S. Air Force bomber named Lucky Lady II made the first nonstop flight around the world in 1949. It took the crew three days, 22 hours and 1 minute to make the trip. The plane was refueled four times in flight.
The speed record goes to the 1961 space flights of Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov of Russia and the 1962 flight of American John Glenn Jr. They circled the earth in about one hour and 30 minutes.