Christopher Columbus is known as the man who discovered the New World in 1492. Columbus was an Italian navigator working for the rulers of Spain. He sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean searching for another route to Asia, but instead he discovered America.
On the first of his four voyages he landed on an Island in the Bahamas and named it San Salvador. He thought he had reached the East Indies, and so he called the people of the Caribbean Islands Indians.
Columbus knew that his crew would be very frightened if they discovered how far away from home they were. That is why Columbus kept two separate records. The first was for him, and on it he kept track of the actual distance traveled. But on the other he wrote a reduced distance and showed it to his crew.
On his second voyage he stopped at the island of Puerto Rico. This earned him the reputation of discovering America. In fact, we know now that 500 years before Columbus set foot in America, Vikings from Iceland and Greenland had already set up colonies there. But, by 1492 that had been forgotten and Columbus was given the credit for discovering America.
Columbus brought many new things from the New World, tobacco, pineapples and cocoa beans are but a few of them.© 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
