Get Your Own Voice Player ManageEarly life I was born in Honolulu, Hawai'i. I attended Punahou School and O'ahu College in Hawai'i from 1882 to 1892. I then returned to the United States in my teens in order to complete my education, entering Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from which I graduated in 1894. I obtained a degree from Yale University in 1898, a degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1900, and a degree from Harvard University in 1905. While at University, I was a member of Acacia Fraternity. I taught history and politics at Harvard and then served as preceptor under Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University. In 1907, Yale University appointed me as a lecturer in South American history.
Archaeology It was during my time as a lecturer — later professor — at Yale that I rediscovered the largely forgotten Incan city of Machu Picchu. In 1908, I had served as delegate to the First Pan American Scientific Congress at Santiago, Chile. On my way home via Peru, a local prefect convinced me to visit the pre-Columbian city of Choqquequirau. I was thrilled by the prospect of unexplored Incan cities, and in 1911 returned to the Andes with the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911. On 24 July 1911, a mestizo guide led me to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley, and I had my "lost city".
I returned to Peru in 1912 and 1915 with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society.
Machu Picchu has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America, and I am recognized as the man who brought the site to world attention, although many others contributed to the archaeological resurrection of the site. The switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site from the Urubamba River is called the Hiram Bingham Highway.
I have been cited as one possible basis for the 'Indiana Jones' character, [1]. My book Lost City of the Incas became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948 [2]
Marriage and family
I married Alfreda Mitchell, granddaughter of Charles L. Tiffany, on November 20, 1899, and had seven sons, including: congressman Jonathan Brewster Bingham (1914-1986); diplomat Hiram Bingham IV (1903-1988); Charles Tiffany (1906-1993) (physician), Brewster (1908-1995) (minister), Mitchell (1910-1994) (artist), Woodbridge (1901-1986) (professor) and Alfred Mitchell Bingham (1905-1998) (lawyer). After a divorce I married Suzanne Carroll Hill in June of 1937.
Military I achieved the rank of captain of the Connecticut National Guard in 1916. In 1917, I became an aviator and organized the United States Schools of Military Aeronautics. I served the Aviation Section of the United States Army Signal Corps and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. In Issoudun, France, I commanded a flying school.
Politics In 1922, I was elected Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, an office I held until 1924.
In November 1924, I was elected Governor. On December 16, 1924, I was also elected as a Republican to serve in the United States Senate to fill a vacancy created by the suicide of Frank Bosworth Brandegee. Now both Governor-elect and Senator-elect, I served as Governor for one day, the shortest term of any Connecticut Governor.
I was Chairman of the Committee on Printing and then Chairman of the Committee on Territories and Insular Possessions. In 1929, I was censured by the Senate on charges that I had placed a lobbyist on my payroll.
President Calvin Coolidge appointed me to the President's Aircraft Board during his first term in the Senate; the press quickly dubbed me "The Flying Senator".I failed in my second reelection effort in the wake of the 1932 Democratic landslide following the Great Depression and left the Senate at the end of my second term in 1933. [1]
During World War II, I lectured at several United States Navy training schools. In 1951, I was appointed Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, an assignment I kept through 1953.Death On June 6, 1956, I died at my Washington, DC home. I was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. My son Hiram Bingham IV was a diplomat and World War II hero, while another son, Jonathan Brewster Bingham, served as a Democrat in Congress.
References "The trail less trampled on" in USA Today by Gene Sloan, September 23, 2005: "The iconic mountaintop citadel, discovered less than a century ago by American explorer Hiram Bingham, the inspiration for Indiana Jones, is a thrilling reward after days of exertion." Lost City of the Incas biographical profile from the United States Senate websiteExternal links Works by Hiram Bingham at Project Gutenberg Selection from Bingham's The Lost City of the Incas Machu Picchu on the Web - The Discovery Inca Land, by Hiram Bingham Wikipedia.org.