On June 20, 1970, 21-year-old Dave Kunst walked out of his home in Waseca, Minnesota, and didn't stop until he had circumnavigated the globe four years later.
Along the way, he met celebrities like Princess Grace of Monaco and Thor Heyerdahl, and raised money for UNICEF. Kunst began his 14,500-mile (23,336-km) trek with his brother John, but while passing through Afghanistan in 1972, bandits attacked them, killing John and wounding Dave. After recovering back home, Dave went back to Afghanistan and kept going, this time with another brother, Peter. Dave parted ways with Peter in Australia, but he nevertheless completed his record-breaking walk on October 5, 1974, becoming the first recorded person in the modern era to walk around the Earth.
Afterward, when asked why he had undertaken such a grueling ordeal, Kunst said, "I was tired of Waseca, tired of my job, tired of a lot of little people who don’t want to think, and tired of my wife."
Global glory:
- The first person to fly solo around the Earth was Wiley Post, who completed the task in a little over a week in 1933.
- In 1884, Thomas Stevens spent about three years becoming the first person to bicycle around the world.
- While no one has swum all the way around the world, Benoit Lecomte spent 72 days in the water in 1998 swimming significant portions of the Atlantic Ocean.