A monk who broke the law to leave China and walked to India in search of the truth
A Buddhist monk who left Tang China illegally, he crossed deserts and mountains to reach India, studied for years at its great monasteries, and…
An enslaved man who helped carry an expedition across a continent and was denied his freedom for it
Enslaved by William Clark from childhood, he hunted, scouted and voted alongside free men on the Lewis and Clark expedition, then was refused the…
A foundryman’s apprentice from an occupied village who became the first human in space
He spent part of his childhood in a mud dugout under German occupation, trained as a metalworker, and on 12 April 1961 orbited the Earth once in a…
Captured for ten years on a diplomatic mission, he came home having opened the Silk Road
Sent west by the Han emperor to find allies against a rival empire, he was captured and held for a decade, escaped, and returned with the first…
A captive boy who commanded the largest fleets the world had seen, sailing seven times to Arabia and Africa
Taken prisoner and castrated as a child, he rose to admiral of the Ming treasure fleets and between 1405 and 1433 led voyages of hundreds of ships to…
