Dumitru Dan
Geographer and Circumnavigators of the globe (1889–1978)
Dumitru (Demetre) Dan (14 July 1890 – 4 December 1978) was a Romanian geographer, professor of geography, and globe-trotter. He was best known for his fabricated tale about walking around the world.
Dan's around the world tale
According to Dan, in 1908, the Touring club de France announced a contest for walking around the world, with an offered prize of 100,000 francs. Dumitru Dan and his countrymen Paul Pârvu, George Negreanu and Alexandru Pascu were all students in Paris at the time, and they decided to take up the challenge, using their own money and resources.
The group returned to Romania to prepare, learning additional languages, studying cartography, and doing weight training and exercises for two hours a day. They walked 45 km per day, travelling through plains, hills and mountains in all seasons. They learned Romanian folk songs and dances and how to play the flute and accordion so that they could support their endeavor along the way by performing their native folklore.
In 1910, the group set out on their voyage with a dog, Harap, wearing native garb and walking in sandals. Much of the route was covered between 1910 and 1916, but Dan claimed his companions did not survive until the trip's completion in 1923.
Death of fellow travelers
On 17 July 1911, in India, the group were invited to the palace of the Rajah of Bombay.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dumitru Dan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.