John Ledyard 1776

Mode of exit: Paddled a handmade canoe down the Connecticut

Career: Explorer

Notable achievement: Almost circled the globe

Quote: "Cruelties and hardships are tales I leave untold."

Dartmouth's second most-famous non-graduate (after Robert Frost) sailed with Captain Cook to the Sandwich Islands in 1776 and watched as the captain was butchered by natives indignant at their treatment by the explorer. In 1785, during a visit to Paris, he met American Ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson. Eighteen years before the Lewis and Clark expedition, Ledyard inspired Jefferson to support his idea of exploring the American West. The plan was to head across Europe and Russia, sail to the American West Coast, and trek eastward. He got to within some 500 miles of Russia's Pacific coast before the Empress Catherine had him arrested and escorted to the Polish border; he had failed to get her permission for the trip. He ended up that same year in Cairo planning to explore the African interior. While taking an emetic to sooth his nerves, he vomited so violently that he burst a blood vessel and died on the spot. Jefferson wrote later, "Thus failed the first attempt to explore the western part of our Northern continent."