Wild Facts About Expeditions
Before you could simply whip your phone out and see whatever you wanted in an instant, humans had to go out on foot and explore the world around them. These are some incredible and sometimes baffling examples of their exploits.
Expeditions Facts
22. Christopher Almost Didn’t Columbus
It's well known that Christopher Columbus struggled to find funding for his exploration west, but he had actually fully given up hope in the beginning of 1492, and was on his way to France when he found out his voyage was finally given the green light by monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.
21. More Gold for Me
On the voyage west, Columbus told his crew that whoever spotted land first would be given a sum of gold. Well, when Rodrigo de Triana spotted the small island now known as San Salvador, Columbus didn’t honor his word. Instead, he claimed that he had actually seen a faint light in the distance first, but hadn’t said anything about it. Yeah, Chris, sure you did.
20. Angry God
You get it by now: Columbus was a jerk. But maybe his most successful feat of jerkdom was the time he intimidated the natives of Jamaica by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse.
After he became stranded on the island, the indigenous people fed Columbus and his crew for six months before scaling back their supply.
Columbus then consulted one of his texts, told the tribal leader that his God was angry with them, and used the eclipse (which he had just looked up in said text) to prove it.
After the eclipse occurred, the native peoples commenced showering the Europeans with provisions.