Today in History: Columbus Reaches the 'New World' & 10 Other October 12 Events That Shaped History

After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island on October 12, 1492, believing he has reached East Asia.

Columbus expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a maritime entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the gold and spice islands of Asia.

At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. 

Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century. 

However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed).

OTHER EVENTS THAT SHAPED HISTORY ON THIS DAY

2002

Terrorists kill 202 in Bali, Indonesia.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1940

Silent-film star Tom Mix dies in Arizona car wreck.

1997

John Denver dies in an aircraft accident.

2007

Al Gore wins Nobel Prize in the wake of "An Inconvenient Truth".

AMERICA CIVIL WAR

1870

Confederate General Robert E. Lee dies.

COLD WAR

1960

Nikita Khrushchev allegedly brandishes his shoe at the United Nations.

SPACE EXPLORATION

1964

USSR leads the space race.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1786

Thomas Jefferson composes romantic letter.

VIETNAM WAR

1972

Racial violence breaks out aboard U.S. Navy ships.

WORLD WAR I

1915

British nurse Edith Cavell executed.