Major Events in Exploration

Portrait of Italian ExplorerChristopher Columbus-

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the Spanish colonization of the New World.

Portrait of Portuguese Explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral-

Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. His fleet of 13 ships sailed far into the western Atlantic Ocean, where he made landfall on what he initially assumed to be a large island. He explored the coast, realizing that the large land mass was probably a continent. The continent was South America, and the land he had claimed for Portugal later came to be known as Brazil. 

Megellan and Elcano circumnavigation-

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. Magellan's expedition of 1519–1522 became the first expedition to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean  (then named "peaceful sea" by Magellan; the passage being made via the Strait of Magellan), and the first to cross the Pacific. His expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth, although Magellan himself did not complete the entire voyage, being killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines.

Colonization of the Americas by the European powers by 1750