Jed bernstein biography of christopher columbus

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in , , and He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands.

Starting in about , small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe. Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round.

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That is, it dates back to early Rome. Christopher Columbus is born in the Republic of Genoa. He begins sailing in his teens and survives a shipwreck off the coast of Portugal in