Christopher Columbus, Italian Explorer

Portrait of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian explorer, colonizer, and navigator credited with the discovery of America. Under the support of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella), he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to European awareness of the American continents. During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, which he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the Caribbean coast of Colombia and Venezuela claiming them for the Spanish Empire. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements in the island of Hispaniola, started Spanish colonization, which foreshadowed the general European colonization of the New World'. He died in 1506 at the age of 54, of a heart attack caused by reactive arthritis. According to his personal diaries and notes by contemporaries, the symptoms of this illness (burning pain during urination, pain and swelling of the knees, and conjunctivitis) were clearly evident in his last three years

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1451 1492 1506 Christophorus Colom Colombo Colon Colonization Colonizer Columbus Cristobal Cristoforo Cristovao Genoese Navigator Voyages

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