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By the Turkish Empire cutting off the land route from Europe to Asia and it gave them more control over the sea. Also the Europeans had to find a better route, they had to learn how to navigate and they had to build better ships, which led to the age of exploration.
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Prince Henry the Navigator was an important figure in 15th-Century Portuguese politics. He was best known for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes.
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Bartolomeu Dias was a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household and a Portuguese explorer. His great accomplishment was that he sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, which made him the first European to have done so.
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, colonizer and citizen of the Republic of Genoa. Christopher's main accomplishment was reaching the continent of America. He had thought it was Asia.
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John Cabot was a Genoese navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European exploration of the mainland of North America since the Norse Vikings' visit to Vinland in the eleventh century.
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Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian Explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer . He was the first person to discover that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as said. Instead it was a completely different piece of land.
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Juan Ponce de Leon was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. He led the first known European exploration to Florida, which he named during his first voyage to the area in 1513.
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Vasco Nunez de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.
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Hernan Cortes was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century.
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Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who organized the Spanish expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastian Elcano.
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Francisco Pizzaro was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that conquered the Inca Empire.
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Jacques Cartier was a French explorer of Brenton origin who claimed what is now Canada for France. He was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River.
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Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, and the first documented European to have crossed the Mississippi River.
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Sir Francis Drake was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. He was the first Captain to lead and complete a full circumnavigation of the world. It is important to exploration because we were able to find everything on a map because of him.
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Sir Walter Raleigh was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy and explorer. He was well known for popularising tobacco. He also discovered Guiana and a great golden city.
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Rene-Robert de LaSalle was a French explorer. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and The Gulf of Mexico.
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Louis Jolliet was a French Canadian explorer known for his discoveries in North America.
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Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit Missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement.
