-
-
About 90 men, most of them spaniards, prepared to make the voyage. Columbus's ships--The Nina, The Pinta, and The Santa Maria--were tiny, between 55 and 90 feet long, sailing with the wind they covered up to 170 miles per day.
-
Neither Spain nor Portugal had any intrests in Cabots Ideas. However, the English were interested enough to finance a voyage of exploration. Cabot left England with one ship. He crossed the North Atlantic and explored the region around Newfoundland.
-
He was an Italian explorer who made two trips to the new lands. A German mapmaker labeled the region "the land of Amerigo" on his maps. The name was soon shortened to America.
-
These early Spanish voyages set the stage for a great exchange between the Western and Eastern hemispheres. The next century began what is now known as the Columbian Exchange, a transfer of people, products, and ideas between the hemispheres.
-
He was a spanish colonist who explored the carribean coast of what is today Panama. Hacking his way through the jungle, he became the first european to set eyes on th Pacific Ocean.
-
He sailed North from Puerto Rico to investigate reports of a large island. He found beautiful flowers there, so he named the place La Florida. Ponce de Leon became the first Spaniard toset foot in what is now the United States.
-
He was a portuguese explorer who set out to find an Atlantic Pacific passage. For more than a year, the small fleet slowly moved down the South American Coastlooking for a strait. As it pushed farther south than earlier expiditions it encountered penguins and other animals that no european had ever seen before. Finally near the southern tip of presant-day Argentina. Magellan found a narrow passage. His ships exited what is today the strait of Magellan.
-
As Spaniards moved closer to Tenochtitlan, many native Americans joined them. The Aztec Leader Montezuma met with Cortez and tried to get him to leave by offering him gold. The gold had the opposite affect. Cortez took Montezuma hostage and claimed all of Mexico for spain. However the aztecs soon rebelled and forced the Spaniards to flee.
-
When about 400 Spaniards landed near the present-day city of St. Petersburg. Finding none of the gold they hoped for, they marched into northern Florida. There, under attack by the Native Americans, they built 5 crude boats and set out to sea. About 80 survivors led by Alvar eventually landed at present-day Galveston Island on the Texas coast.
-
A swiss thinker who had a great influence on the development of Protestant churches in France, Switzerland, Scotland, and the Netherlands.
-
He led about 170 soldiers through the jungle into the heart of the Inca Empire. Pizarro then took the Inca ruler Atahualpa prisoner. Although the Inca people paid a huge ransom to free their ruler, Pizarro executed him anyway. By November 1533, the Spanish had defeated the leaderless Incas and captured their capital city of Cuzco.
-
Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon, the Daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabellaof Spain. When Catherine did not produce a male heir to the throne, henry sought to divorce and remarry.
-
He was searching for riches in todays southeastern United States. De Soto traveled as far North as the Carolinas and as far west as Oklahoma. He died in what is now known as Luoisiana, in 1542, having found the Mississippi River but no cities of Gold.
-
He set out with about 1100 spaniards and Native Americans to find the Golden city. Althoughhe never found the city, he did explore much of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Kansas.
-
He was the priest who traveled through New Spain working for reform.
