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He hoped to find rumored Christian allies, and perhaps a sea route to the Orient. -
The islands offered a healthier and more strategically secure base for trade along the African coast than any location on the mainland. -
His voyage showed that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans flowed into each other. Ptolemy had been wrong to think that the Indian Ocean was land-locked. Dias' discovery paved the way for Vasco da Gama's voyage to India. -
He was the first European to sight the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. -
This was the first time that a European had arrived in India via the sea. -
In 1497 he sailed west from Bristol hoping to find a shorter route to Asia, a land believed to be rich in gold, spices and other luxuries. After a month, he discovered a 'new found land', today known as Newfoundland in Canada. -
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa became the first European to discover a new ocean. He named it the South Sea; today it is called the Pacific Ocean. On September 29, Balboa went into the water and claimed the sea, its islands and lands for Spain. -
Álvares himself was accompanied by two other Portuguese mariners. Álvares made first contact on Chinese soil on an island near the historic city of Guangzhou in southern China in May 1513. -
Charles V pledged support for Magellan's expedition to discover a Western ocean route to the Moluccas in hopes of establishing a viable Spanish spice trade and undermining rival Portugal. -
Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca first set foot on land that would become Texas in 1528, when his crude raft ran aground near Galveston Island. The raft held survivors of an ill-fated Spanish expedition to settle Florida. -
French mariner Jacques Cartier was the first European to navigate the St. Lawrence River, and his explorations of the river and the Atlantic coast of Canada, on three expeditions from 1534 to 1542, laid the basis for later French claims to North America. Cartier is also credited with naming Canada -
The first contact between Japan and Portugal occurred in 1543 when three Portuguese merchants landed on Tanegashima Island at the southern tip of the Japanese Archipelago after their boat was blown off course. -
On his first voyage, Frobisher reached Resolution Island, one of the many uninhabited Canadian arctic islands, and thought he might have found the entrance to the passage. Instead, he discovered a bay on the south of Baffin Island, now known as Frobisher Bay. -
In late February and early March 1606 Willem Janszoon, captain of the Dutch East India Company ship the Duyfken, became the first European to make recorded contact with and map part of the Australian continent. -
In 1607 and 1608, Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a rumoured Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle. In 1609, he landed in North America on behalf of the Dutch East India Company and explored the region around the modern New York metropolitan area. -
In August 1642 Abel Tasman set sail from Batavia with two ships, the Zeehaen and the Heemskerck. His expedition would lead to the first European contacts with the people of present-day New Zealand and Tonga and the discovery of Tasmania, south of Australia.