Wheeler Expeditions

1960: He didn’t stop there: at age 16, he left home to travel deep into the Amazon jungle, where he was adopted into a clan of headhunters called the Jivaro, the only people in the world to shrink human heads.

1960: In the same year, Jack swam the famed Hellespont, the Turkish strait linking the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, known from the ancient Greek myth of Lysander.

1961: At age 17, while travelling through pre-war Vietnam, he saved a Montagnard village terrorized by a huge tiger known as the Man Killer of Dalat.

1976: After receiving his Ph.D. in Aristotelian ethics from the University of Southern California, he wrote his first book, The Adventurer’s Guide (McKay, 1976), the first how-to handbook to becoming an adventurer oneself.

1976: In the same year, he founded Wheeler Adventures, later to become Wheeler Expeditions, with the goal of leading anyone with an intrepid spirit and a positive attitude on thrilling journeys all around the world.

1976-1979: In the following years, he made three “first contacts” with tribes never before seen by the outside world: a clan of Aushiri in the Amazon, the Wali-Ali-Fo in New Guinea, and a band of bushmen in the Kalahari.

1979: Jack led an expedition retracing, for the first time in history, Hannibal’s route over the Alps with elephants.

1981: On April 15, Jack set the world record for the Most Northerly Parachute Jump: at 90°N, free-falling right onto the North Pole. As one edition of the Guinness Book of World Records says, “Wheeler’s record is one that cannot be bettered after setting”, for you can’t get more north than the North Pole.

1984: Jack founded the Freedom Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting freedom around the world. He traveled to numerous countries over the following years, such as Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Romania, to help those nations regain their sovereignty and bring freedom to their people.