Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. [1] It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci , the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years on behalf of Spain and Portugal , with the name given by German ...
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 ...
First voyage (conjectural). Modern place names in black, Columbus's place names in blue. After 29 days out of sight of land, on October 7, 1492, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds", some of which his sailors trapped and determined to be "field" birds (probably Eskimo curlews and American golden plovers). Columbus changed course to ...
By the time of the Revolution, the name Columbia had lost the comic overtone of its Lilliputian origins and had become established as an alternative, or poetic, name for America. While the name America is necessarily scanned with four syllables, according to 18th-century rules of English versification Columbia was normally scanned with three ...
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 ...
Oprah Winfrey is a household name,but it turns out "Oprah" is not her real name. A little known fact about the 61-year-old media mogul -- her family wanted to give her a Biblical name, so they ...
There is a movement to remove the name "squaw" from geographic place names across the United States. [76] There is a minority counter-movement among a small number of academics to "reclaim" what they claim is the possible original meaning of the word, as an in-group term, which could still be offensive if used outside of that speech community.