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1826 – Scottish explorer Alexander Gordon Laing becomes the first European to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu, but is murdered upon leaving the city. [99] 1827 – Jedediah Smith crosses the Sierra Nevada (via Ebbetts Pass) and the Great Basin. [29] 1828 – French explorer René Caillié is the first European to return alive from Timbuktu.
A major Russian expedition for exploration was mounted in 1742, contemporaneous with other eighteenth-century European state-sponsored ventures. It was not clear at the time whether Eurasia and North America were completely separate continents. The first voyages were made by Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov, with settlement beginning after ...
1502: Columbus sails along the mainland coast south of Yucatán, and reaches present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; 1503: Las Tortugas noted by Columbus in passage through the Western Caribbean present-day Cayman Islands; 1508: Ponce de León founds Caparra on San Juan Bautista (now Puerto Rico) 1511: Conquest of Cuba begins
The Silk Road and spice trade routes which the Ottoman Empire later expanded its use of in 1453 and onwards, spurring European exploration to find alternative sea routes Marco Polo's travels (1271–1295) A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. [43]
Religious zeal played a large role in Spanish and Portuguese overseas activities. While the Pope himself was a political power to be heeded (as evidenced by his authority to decree whole continents open to colonization by particular kings), the Church also sent missionaries to convert the indigenous peoples of other continents to the Catholic faith.
From the early 15th century to the early 17th century the Age of Discovery had, through Portuguese seafarers, and later, Spanish, Dutch, French and English, opened up southern Africa, the Americas (New World), Asia and Oceania to European eyes: Bartholomew Dias had sailed around the Cape of southern Africa in search of a trade route to India; Christopher Columbus, on four journeys across the ...
While it is true that Columbus visited Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in 1493, Ponce de Leon was the first known European to reach the present-day United States mainland. [4] On September 25, 1513, Castilian conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean once he crossed the Isthmus of Panama.
In Weigel's map (1719) intended to promote sales of the Mississippi Company in Germany; most of the present-day United States appears under the name "Louisiana". In 1718, there were only 700 Europeans in Louisiana. The Mississippi Company arranged for ships to bring 800 more, who landed in Louisiana in 1718, doubling the European population.