Christopher Colombus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. As a young man, he sailed the Mediterranean and was shipwrecked off the Portuguese Coast and lived there for nine years and trained with map makers and other sailors in a navigation school.
Colombus believed that the Earth was round and not flat. He read the works of Marco Polo and studied the map made by Toscanelli. This map led him to believe that China was only 4500 km west of Europe. However, the map was wrong and did not show the large continent in the way, America.
He convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to sponsor his mission and they provided him with three ships the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. He recruited 80 men and they left Palos on 3 August 1492. As the weeks went by with no land in sight the crew became afraid as they would not have enough food for the journey. To reassure them, Columbus kept a fake logbook to show them that they had travelled much shorter distances in reality. He also threatened any man who rebelled with hanging. Finally 69 days after they left Spain, land was sighted. Columbus named it San Salvador (Holy Saviour) and the people Indians, as he was sure he reached India but it was in fact America.
He spent the next two months exploring the Islands and he returned to Spain in early 1493 and was given a hero's welcome, he presented the King and Queen with slaves, exotic fruit, maize, parrots and some gold. He was appointed as Governor of their new territory.
He then returned to the New World several times and mistreated the native people, selling them into slavery and torturing and killing them. The Spanish settlers complained to the King and Queen of Spain and he was removed as governor in 1499.
As more people settled in the New World it became clear that he had not reached Asia at all. Columbus died in 1506, a broken man who still insisted that he had found his way to Asia.