Just learned this morning that I have been selected as a Member of New York City's prestigious Explorers Club.What an honor.
A bit about the Club:
The Explorers Club was founded in New York City, New York, in 1904. The club as explained in its charter was formed to further general exploration, to spread knowledge of the same; to acquire and maintain a library of exploration; and to encourage explorers in their work by “evincing interest and sympathy, and especially by bringing them in personal contact and binding them in the bonds of good fellowship” (TEC, Certificate of Incorporation, October 25, 1905). The Explorers Club is a sister organization of the National Geographic Society, and one of the Honorary Directors of The Explorers Club, Gilbert Melville Grosvenor, is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Geographic Society. Further, the two organizations share many board and general members.
Today, The Explorers Club is a multi-disciplinary society dedicated to advancing field research, scientific exploration and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore. The club's mission is to encourage scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space, emphasizing the physical and biological sciences. Its headquarters is the Lowell Thomas Building on East 70th Street in New York City.
Membership in The Explorers Club is open to qualified individuals and corporations that are leaders in science and exploration. The Club counts 3,000 members representing every continent and more than 60 nations. Over the years, membership has included polar explorers Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, Ernest Shackleton, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Sir George Hubert Wilkins, and Frederick Cook; aviators Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, Richard Archbold and Chuck Yeager; underwater explorers Sylvia Earle, Jacques Piccard, Don Walsh and Robert Ballard; astronauts John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, and cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh; anthropologists Louis Leakey, Richard Leakey and Jane Goodall; mountaineers Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay; former U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover; and thousands of other notables including journalist Lowell Thomas, newspaper cartoonist Mel Cummin and pioneer explorer Thor Heyerdahl.
Today, the club serves as a base for expedition planning, presentations, meetings, and events. The Club invites returning explorers to share their experience and findings in public lectures and member events, and in its quarterly periodical, The Explorers Journal.
