James Baquet

    It is commonly held that Christopher Columbus discovered that the world was round, or at least that he proved it. He did neither.

    By his day it was common knowledge that the earth was a sphere. The main error of his time was that people had miscalculated the size of the earth, believing it much smaller than it was. So Columbus was surprised to run into a huge land mass — North and South America, called the “New World” — when he expected to reach Asia by traveling west from Europe.

    It was left to another sailor — a Portuguese sailing for the Spanish monarchs, just as Columbus was an Italian doing so — to “prove” (almost) that the earth was round.

    This was Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), veteran of many voyages, who was selected by the Spanish king nearly 30 years after Columbus to find a route to the “Spice Islands” (the Moluccas, part of modern Indonesia).

    The background on this is interesting. Between Columbus’ second and third voyages (he made four over a 10-year period), Spain and Portugal held a meeting which resulted in the Treaty of Tordesillas, essentially dividing the world between them. (The other powers of Europe, such as the Dutch, paid little attention to this agreement.) As the Portuguese got the “East,” they claimed the rights to the route around the tip of Africa to reach Asia.

    The Spanish, then, knowing of the Pacific Ocean (seen by Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1513, but called by him “the South Sea”), sent Magellan to find a way around the Americas to reach Asia. His route was through what we now call “the Strait of Magellan,” around the southern tip of South America.

    Alas, Magellan was not to complete his voyage. He became embroiled in a local feud in the south of what is now the Philippines, and was killed in a battle. His expedition went on without him, though, proving once and for all that the world was indeed round.

    Ironically, it was he who first called the Pacific the “Peaceful Ocean” — not knowing he would die in battle while wading in it to shore. His body was kept by the victorious chief as a war prize, and was never recovered.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. walking in water

    2. things that “everyone” knows

    3. large area of land, like a continent

    4. agreement between two nations

    5. believed

    6. involved in a difficult situation

    7. something round, like a ball

    8. long-standing disagreement between two groups

    9. trips by sea

    10. figured wrongly