Ah, yes, but once Columbus “discovered” America, it remained discovered.
That's why he gets all the credit. Not the Vikings. Even though they've made an attempt on a colony in America a couple of hundreds years earlier.
“Ah, yes, but once Columbus “discovered” America, it remained discovered.”
I agree. Commercial secrecy during the Late Middle Ages was a given and any resources or lands discovered by fishermen and expeditions would have been kept secret as long as possible. Imagine the glee of the Vikings as they sold narwhal tusks from the Canadian Artic to the Europeans as unicorn horns.
Columbus actually “discovered” and explored the Caribbean islands if Hispaniola (Dominican Republic/Haiti) and Cuba.