After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island on October 12, 1492, believing he has reached East Asia.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a maritime entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the gold and spice islands of Asia.
At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes.
Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century.
However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).
OTHER EVENTS THAT SHAPED HISTORY ON THIS DAY
2002
Terrorists kill 202 in Bali, Indonesia.
ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1940
Silent-film star Tom Mix dies in Arizona car wreck.
1997
John Denver dies in an aircraft accident.
2007
Al Gore wins Nobel Prize in the wake of "An Inconvenient Truth".
AMERICA CIVIL WAR
1870
Confederate General Robert E. Lee dies.
COLD WAR
1960
Nikita Khrushchev allegedly brandishes his shoe at the United Nations.
SPACE EXPLORATION
1964
USSR leads the space race.
U.S. PRESIDENTS
1786
Thomas Jefferson composes romantic letter.
VIETNAM WAR
1972
Racial violence breaks out aboard U.S. Navy ships.
WORLD WAR I
1915
British nurse Edith Cavell executed.