The National Geographic Society is founded
On this day · 13 January 1888
Thirty-three explorers and scientists gathered in a Washington club to spread geographic knowledge, launching a global institution.
On January 13, 1888, a group of 33 explorers, scientists, teachers, cartographers, and financiers met at the Cosmos Club on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Their goal, written into the new organization’s charter, was “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”
They drafted a constitution and elected the lawyer and philanthropist Gardiner Greene Hubbard as the first president of the National Geographic Society. The certificate of incorporation was signed two weeks later, on January 27. That October, the Society published the first issue of its official journal, National Geographic Magazine.
Hubbard’s son-in-law, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, would later lead the Society too.
What began as a small scholarly club became one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations, funding thousands of expeditions and research projects, from polar treks to deep-sea dives, and turning its yellow-bordered magazine into an icon of exploration recognized around the globe.
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