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Showing results 51 – 60 of 111

Glossary Term – Person

Juan Ponce de León

Juan Ponce de León (ca. 1460–1521) was the Spanish explorer who adventured through Florida in a search for the fountain of youth. Ponce de León traveled with Columbus’s 1493 expedition and took part in another expedition to Hispaniola in 1502, where he became the governor of the western part of the island. In 1513, he set off to establish a settlement in the Bahamas but instead happened upon present-day Florida, which he believed was an island, and claimed it for Spain. He returned to Spain in 1514, where he was recognized with a knighthood...

Glossary Term – Person

Marco Polo

Marco Polo (1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant who, as a young man, set off on a years-long journey with his father, Nicolo, through Asia. The Polos arrived in China around 1275 and spent seventeen years there. They returned to Venice around 1295, when Marco was forty-two years old. Just two years later, a ship under Marco Polo’s command was captured and held in Genoa. While imprisoned in Genoa, Polo met a fellow prisoner to whom he dictated his own, as well as his father’s, travels and adventures in Asia. Polo’s account would become famous...

Glossary Term – Person

Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle

Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643–1687) claimed the Mississippi Valley for France in 1682, having led an expedition down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle was murdered five years later, during another expedition, in a mutiny by his own men.

Glossary Term – Person

Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) was a French explorer who founded Quebec and oversaw the creation and organization of New France.

Glossary Term – Person

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (1475–1517) was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. Balboa first went to the New World in 1500 and spent several years on Hispaniola. In 1509, he founded the settlement of Darien and soon led a journey across Panama. By 1513, Balboa had crossed the isthmus and become the first European to reach the Pacific.

Glossary Term – Person

Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama (1469–1524) was a Portuguese navigator who discovered a passage to India by sailing around Africa. Da Gama left Portugal in July 1497 and reach India in May 1498. Da Gama’s discovery of a passage to India was a major step in the expansion of Portuguese trade.

Glossary Term – Person

Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh (ca. 1552–1618) was an English writer and adventurer whose exploits eventually led to his execution. In 1584, after receiving a patent for territory from Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh led an expedition to North America and sailed from what is now Florida to the Carolinas. In 1585, he left a group of English colonists at Roanoke, which failed and was abandoned. In 1595, Raleigh led an expedition to Guiana and in 1596 published a book about his discoveries there. Despite his successes in Guiana, however, he was accused of...

Glossary Term – Person

Giovanni da Verrazano

Very little is known about the life of Giovanni da Verrazano (ca. 1485–ca. 1528); even his birthplace is a matter of dispute: some scholars place it in Tuscany while others claim that he was born to Italian parents in the French city of Lyon. There is some speculation that he began voyaging to the New World as early as 1508 as part of the expanding French fishing industry in the Grand Banks. His experience led to his appointment by King Francis I of France in 1523 to head an expedition seeking a passage through the New World to the Pacific...

Glossary Term – Person

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (ca. 1480–1521) was a Portuguese explorer who led the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan was unable to secure Portuguese support for his expedition, but in 1518 Spain provided him with five ships for the trip. The fleet set sail from Spain in September 1519. The voyage was completed in 1522, but Magellan did not see its end. In 1521, he was killed in a conflict with the inhabitants of Mactan Island in the Philippines. Magellan wasn’t the only one who perished during the voyage. Only nineteen of his men,...

Glossary Term – Person

Francisco Coronado

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (1510–1554) was a sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador who became the first European to explore what is now the southwestern United States. In 1540 Coronado set off on an expedition in search of legendary cities of gold. In July 1540, Coronado and his men reached the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh. There the Spanish announced the requerimiento, which demanded Indian submission to Spanish dominion, sparking a clash between the two groups. Coronado went on to meet more peacefully with Zuni leaders and pressed...