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Christopher Columbus [b] (/ k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ə s /; [2] between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian [3] [c] explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa [3] [4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
Columbus had planned for Queen Isabella to set up trading posts with the cities of the Far East made famous by Marco Polo, but whose Silk Road and eastern maritime routes had been blockaded to her crown's trade. However, Columbus would never find Cathay (China) or Zipangu , and there was no longer any Great Khan for trade treaties.
1491: Columbus sets sail aboard the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. 1492: Columbus reaches the Bahamas, [5] Cuba and Hispaniola. 1492: La Navidad is established on the island of Hispaniola; it was destroyed by the following year. 1493: The colony of La Isabela is established on the island of Hispaniola. [6] 1493: Columbus arrives in Puerto Rico
The date Columbus arrived in the Americas is celebrated in some countries of Latin America. The most common name for the celebration in Spanish (including some Latin American communities [ 70 ] in the United States) is the Día de la Raza ("day of the race" or the "day of the [Hispanic] people"), commemorating the first encounters of Europeans ...
Illustrative woodcut from the Latin edition of Columbus's letter printed in Basel in 1494. [1]A letter written by Christopher Columbus on February 15, 1493, is the first known document announcing the completion of his first voyage across the Atlantic, which set out in 1492 and reached the Americas.
Reenactment of a Viking landing in L'Anse aux Meadows. Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. [1]
A map may prove that Marco Polo discovered America more than two centuries before Christopher Columbus. A sheepskin map, believed to be a copy of the 13th century Italian explorer's, may indicate ...
While it is true that Columbus visited Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in 1493, Ponce de Leon was the first known European to reach the present-day United States mainland. [ 4 ] On September 25, 1513, Castilian conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean once he crossed the Isthmus of Panama .