Jacob Roggeveen

Jacob Roggeveen was born on 1 February 1659 in the Netherlands, where he and his brother Jan planned an expedition to locate Terra Australis and the rumored Davis Land. Jan stayed behind while Jacob commanded the voyage that departed in 1721. On Easter Sunday 1722, instead of finding the continent they sought, Roggeveen's ships reached a remote island he named for the holiday — Easter Island. The expedition continued west, where he became the first European to sight Bora Bora and Maupiti in the Society Islands, then Samoa. He returned having opened new dots on the map, though not the landmass…