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Jan 1, 1450
Prince Henry the Navigator
He set up the first european school for navigators in Sagres Portugal. Was fascinated by all info concering saling, navagation and astronony. Worked with others to design and build better ships. He also sent parties of explores south along Afericas west coast. -
May 17, 1487
Bartolomeu Dias
Readied ships for a long,hard voyage. Dias touched at serval points on Africa's west coast before strong winds blew him soulth ward. After the storm ended, Dias went on to reach Africa's east coast, without knowing his ships had been blown around the tip of the continent. -
Aug 17, 1492
Christopher Columbus
He was the son of a weaver. He was a skilled navigator from Genoa, Italy. Columbus believed the world was round not flat. He set sail from Spain in August 1492. -
May 19, 1493
Treaty of Torddesillas
In 1493, the Pope drew a papal line of demarcation or an imaginary line from the North Pole to the South Pole, some 300 miles, west of the Azores Islands. Spain was to have the non-Christian lands west of the line , and Portugal the non-Christian lands east of the line. -
May 2, 1497
John Cabot
He sailed out of Bristol with his ship called the Matthew on May 2 1497. He landed in the new world believeing that he had landed on the east coast of Asia. -
Jun 16, 1497
Vasco da Gama
After four months at sea da Gama's convoy rounded the Cape of Good Hope. On May 20th 1498, da Gama's ships landed at Calicut. An attempt was made to kill him. In August daGama decied to leave, he and his crew loaded what spices they could and started home. -
May 17, 1500
Pedro Cabral
Discovered Brazil and sailed east to India.Cabral's patron was King Manuel I of Portugal, who sent him on an expedition to India. Cabral's 13 ships left on March 9, 1500, following the route of Vasco da Gama. -
May 18, 1501
Amerigo Vespucci
He was born in Florence, Italy in 1454. After his exploration in 1501-1502, he was one of the first explores to come up with the idea that these places he had visted were not part of Aisa. After his exploration, he returned to Seville and became its Master Navigator. -
May 17, 1513
Vasco Nunez de Balboa
He crossed the isthmus of panama and became the first european to see the grate south sea. He was the first European to see the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean, on September 13, 1513. He accomplished this feat after an arduous trek through the jungles of what is now Panama. He claimed the Pacific Ocean and all its shores for Spain, which opened the way for Spanish exploration and conquest along the western coast of South America. -
May 17, 1513
Ponce de Leon
In 1513 he sailed north from the island of Puerto Rico to explore Florida. -
May 17, 1519
Ferdinand Magellan
In 1519 he set sail from Spain. He comanded a fleet of five ships and a crew of 256 people. In October of the following year he sailed though a stormy strait at the tip of South America. -
Jan 18, 1524
Giovanni Verrazano
He was born in 1485, of a good family, at Val di Greve, near Florence. In January 1524 he begain a voyage of discovery to the new world on behalf of his patron Francis I durning which he kept a log of his experiences. -
May 18, 1527
Francisco Pizzaro
He was born in Trujillo, Spain in 1478. Nobody knows the exact date. His parents never married and her was brought up by his mother's parents. In 1527 he made his first expedition on his own to find a rumored civilization called the Incas. -
Nov 19, 1528
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
He was born about 1419 near Cadiz, Spain. At least two vessels washed up on Galveston Island in Nov. 1528. A group of about 250 people put out to sea from northwest Florida on five vessels improvised from local metrials. -
May 18, 1531
Jacques Cartier
In 1531, Francis I commissioned him to look for Northwest Passage, the short route to the Pacific Ocean that had eluded John Cabot in 1497. He got two small ships and 61 crew members. He left Saint Malo in April. -
May 17, 1539
Henan Cortez
In 1539 he sialed from cuba to florida and explored west ward from there. Found no gold but explored the Mississippi river. He was born in a small town of Medellin in south western Spain in 1485. When he was about 18 he saild for the island of Hispaniola. -
Sep 28, 1542
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
A heroic statue of him looks out over the bay that he first saild into on September 28, 1542. He departed from the port of Navided, Mexico on June 27, 1542. Three months later he arrived at a very good inclosed port. -
May 18, 1565
Sir Francis Drake
When he was 18, he started serving in ship trading to the Bay of Biscay. At 24 he was made captin of the Judith. He went on an expedition against the Spanish Main in the West Indies and Central America. -
John Davis
In 1585 he sterted on his first northwestern expedition. DAVIS'S STRAIT. Discovered by the English navigator, John Davis, whose name it bears, on his voyage to find a North-west passage, in 1585. DAY. Day began at sunrise among most of the northern nations, and at sunset among the Athenians and Jews. -
Henry Hudson
On May 1, 1607 Hudson his son and 11 other crew members saild from England on the Hopewell. He and his crew went past Greenland toward the North Pole. In 1609 he moved to Holland and saild for a Dutch trading company on the ship named Half Moon.
