Narrowly escaping slavery herself, Baker risked her life to repress the Saharan slave trade, sought the source of the Nile, and challenged Victorian social conventions.

Mau used traditional skills to guide a canoe from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti, sharing his navigational knowledge with others to keep the wayfinding traditions alive.

By remaining vague about his own biography, Norgay called into question the idea of nationhood and made a deafening point about actions speaking louder than words.

A hash-smoking, cross-dressing woman traveling the Sahara in the early 1900s, Eberhardt unpicked the fabric of society just by being herself.