COLUMBUS

It's Columbus Day, the day we remember Christopher Columbus's voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, though he actually came ashore in the New World on October 12, 1492. He didn't discover the Americas, of course, there were people here already, but he was the first to publicize the existence of the Americas to the rest of Europe, sparking waves of exploration. He was trying to find a new trade route to Asia, and he'd gotten the idea to sail around the world in the opposite direction. He just miscalculated the size of the Earth. He thought the distance from Spain to Asia was about 2,700 miles, when in fact it's about 13,000. He pitched his idea to the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and they turned him down, twice, until they conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492 and had some extra treasure to pay for the trip.
And so Columbus sailed, with the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, three relatively small ships, none of them bigger than a tennis court. After sailing for a little more than a month, they saw a light on the western horizon about 10:00 p.m. on October 11, 1492. Columbus said it was "like a little wax candle that was lifting and rising." They went ashore the following day, probably on one of the islands of the Bahamas.
Columbus never made much money from his exploration, and when he died in 1506, he still believed that he had found a new route to Asia.