Modern Expeditions

Major discoveries and expeditions in recent years:

* April 2000: Climbers Reinhold Messner, an Austrian, Conrad Anker, an American, and Stephen Venables, a Briton, retrace the epic journey of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, following the route he took after his ship Endurance was crushed in pack ice in 1915.

* April 2000: American adventurer Phil Buck, from Greenfield, Mass., completes the first 3,500-mile leg of a round-the-world voyage in a 55-foot reed boat, attempting to prove that ancient civilizations sailed across oceans in such vessels.

* December 1999: The Peruvian Geographic Society of Lima announces that a 1996 expedition, led by Polish explorer Jacek Palkiewicz, has established the source of the Amazon River.

* September 1999: American explorer Gene Savoy of Reno, Nev., who has discovered major Indian ruins in Peru’s rain forests, announces he has found the lost city of Conturmarca.

* June 1999: American Robert Ballard discovers two Phoenician ships, dating to 750 BC, under more than 1,000 feet of water.

* May 1999: Climbers discover George Mallory’s frozen body on Everest, 75 years after the British climber disappeared in his quest to scale the world’s highest peak.

* April 1999: American Johan Reinhard leads a team of archeologists who recover three Inca mummies almost exactly as they were left some 500 years ago on an Andean volcano.

* March 1999: Bertrand Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Britain sail into history as the first aviators to fly a hot-air balloon around the world nonstop.

* January 1999: Australian Peter Hillary, son of Mt. Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary, treks to the South Pole after an Antarctic journey beset by problems, including blizzards, illness and frostbite.

* November 1998: The National Geographic Society announces that Ian Baker has discovered the fabled Shangri La waterfall in southeastern Tibet.