Columbus: Did you mean...?

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle...

The history of tobacco use in the Americas goes back over 1,000 years when natives of the region chewed or smoked the leaves of the plant now known as Nicotiana rustica (primarily in the north) and Nicotiana...

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous...

Ulysses S. Grant's victory at the Battle of Fort Donelson (11-16 February 1862) during the American Civil War elevated him to national fame, opened the Cumberland...

The Columbian Exchange (from 1492 CE) refers to the large-scale transfer of plants, animals, diseases, peoples, and technologies between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia following the transatlantic...

Nautical chart of the North-East Atlantic Ocean, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, accompanied by a circular world map. Alleged author: Cristopher Columbus (l. 1451-1506 CE) Gallica Digital Library...

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and natural philosopher. He created a superior telescope with which he made new observations of the night sky, notably that the surface of the Moon...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is...

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (24 February 1500 to 21 September 1558) reigned from 1519 until his abdication in 1556 and was one of the most powerful rulers in the history of the Habsburg dynasty. Through a series of...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage...