La Salle's sailboat, Le Griffon, was lost on the Great Lakes. Photo: Wikipedia (public domain)
The first European mariners to explore the upper Great Lakes set sail 332 years ago last Sunday.
Navigating the Niagara Falls proved too tricky for explorers before 1679, when Robert La Salle built a ship from scratch above the falls and cruised to Lake Michigan.
A super cool segment of Yahoo! Who Knew? explores the history of European adventures on the world’s largest freshwater bodies of water.
A sunken ship believed to be La Salle’s Le Griffon was found on the bottom of Lake Michigan in 2004; the French government claimed the “Holy Grail” of Great Lakes shipwrecks two years ago.