Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator. He completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening the way for European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the first European contact with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Columbus’s expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries.
About Christopher Columbus in brief
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator. He completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening the way for European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, were the first European contact with the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Columbus’s expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, helping create the modern Western world. Columbus was widely venerated in the centuries after his death, but public perception has fractured in recent decades as scholars give greater attention to the harm committed under his governance. Proponents of the Black Legend theory of history claim that Columbus has been unfairly maligned as part of a wider anti-Catholic sentiment. Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia and the District of Columbia. His name in Ligurian is Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian Cristoforo Colombo, and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón. He was born between 25 August and 31 October 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, though the exact location remains disputed. He went to sea at a young age and travelled widely, as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo and was based in Lisbon for several years, but later took a Castilian mistress; he had one son with each woman.
Columbus never wrote in his native language, which is presumed to have been a Genoese language. In one of his writings, he says he went to the sea at the age of 10 to work on a ship in Savona. In the same year, he took over a tavern in the town of Renese, where he was hired in the service of Domenico Renese. He never clearly renounced his belief that he had reached the Far East and gave the name indios to the indigenous peoples he encountered. The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. He died on 20 May 1506 in a shipwreck off the coast of Punta del Estero, in the island of Barbados. He is buried in the city of San Bartolomeo in the province of Tuscany, Italy. He had three brothers and a sister named Bianetta. His brother Barto worked in a cartography workshop for at least part of his adulthood, and his brother Giacomo worked in the same workshop in Lisbon. He also had a brother named Giovanni Pelrino, as well as a sister called Bianetta, and a brother-in-law named Giacomeo Pelarossa. Columbus is thought to have had a son named Bartolomew Columbus, who was born in 1470 in Genoa and died in 1480 in the village of San Giorgio, in what is today the Province of Savona, in Italy.
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This page is based on the article Christopher Columbus published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
