Every school child knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America. Every school child knows wrongly. When the Genovese explorer's three ships sailed westward from Palo de la Frontera, Spain, on Aug. 2, 1492, he was bound, he thought, for "the noble island of Cipangu" — Japan.
Cipangu would be his gateway to "the Indies," then the term for Asia — land of gold, spices, silks, perfumes, jewels. Columbus made four trans-Atlantic voyages, and died in 1506 certain he'd been on the fringes of Asia. That elusive land, with its riches, exotic civilizations and cities teeming with souls ripe for conversion to Christianity, would be just over the horizon, just a little farther ahead.
America? He never heard of it, never imagined it. The truth would have shattered him — a vast continent and a boundless unknown ocean, the Pacific, lying between Europe and its golden dreams!