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Spain led the Holy League to defeat the Ottoman Turkish Navy at the Battle of Lepanto near Corinth, Greece, in 1571. Hilaire Belloc wrote in The Great Heresies (1938): "This violent Mohammedan pressure on Christendom from the East made a bid for success by sea as well as by land. ... The last great Turkish organization working now from the conquered capital of Constantinople, proposed to cross the Adriatic, to attack Italy by sea and ultimately to recover all that had been lost in the Western Mediterranean. ... There was one critical moment when it looked as though the scheme...

At Fort Kochi’s St. Francis Church, history appears to have been buried, forgotten, and dead. “Remembering Vasco da Gama, Portuguese navigator; he arrived in Cochin…where he died and was first buried” is written on a plain blue board at the chapel. The man who found the sea route to India in 1498, revolutionising international trade and cross-cultural contact, passed away on December 24, 1524. In the actual location of his death, amnesia reigns as programmes for the 500th anniversary are underway at Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon, where his ashes were repatriated from Kochi in 1539. Not even a candle is...

The Zuytdorp shipwreck was likely caused by a storm, not navigational errors, according to new research. Flinders University archaeologists analyzed historical and environmental data, showing the crew had sufficient skills to navigate but were overcome by severe weather...The study, published in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology by Flinders University archaeologists Dr. Ruud Stelten and Professor Wendy van Duivenvoorde, examined ship logs, historical maps, navigational practices, and weather patterns of the era to uncover the causes of the wreck.The Zuytdorp is one of four Dutch shipwrecks discovered off the Western Australian coast in the past century, with the Batavia and the...

It's finally done. Over 3 days of hand-plotting 173 years' worth of data. The end result is unbelievable. What an incredible dataset to look at.

The recently discovered shipwreck may have set sail as part of da Gama's final Indian Ocean voyage—a journey which he made a total of four times before his death 500 years ago. Researchers believe it may have been one of around 20 ships part of this excursion: the São Jorge, which was captained by Fernando de Monroy and sank in 1524, making it one of the earliest European shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean. Eight similar Portuguese shipwrecks of similar age have previously been discovered in the area.The discovery of the Portuguese shipwreck was made in Malindi, Kenya, in 2013 by...

Columbus’ lineage unveiled through DNA analysis The centuries-old mystery of Christopher Columbus’ lineage has been solved. Scientists revealed the explorer’s roots after DNA analysis in a documentary aired on Saturday, October 10th on Spanish television. Researchers, led by forensic pathologist Miguel Llorente, examined microscopic samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral. They compared them to those of his known relatives and descendants. The DNA study confirmed that the remains of Christopher Columbus are indeed buried in Seville. Llorente, briefing reporters on the findings, confirmed this. He specifically stated: “Today it became possible to verify with new technologies, definitively confirming the...

Scientists have solved the 500-year-old mystery surrounding Christopher Columbus' final resting place.The team spent 20 years performing a DNA analysis on human bones found buried in Spain's Seville Cathedral, confirming with 'absolute certainty' they belonged to the explorer who died in 1506.For the past two decades, they have been comparing DNA taken from the samples with that of relatives and descendants.The findings come just ahead of the U.S. holiday in his name, this Monday, timed to the second Monday in October each year to commemorate the Italian voyager's Oct. 12, 1492 discovery of the 'New World' for Spain...Columbus' body had...

Was Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? Most definitely not, say an unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family. This ground breaking documentary follows a trail of proof to show he might have been much more than we know.Who Was The Real Christopher Columbus? | Secrets and Lies of Christopher Columbus | Timeline

The American scholars continue to be brainwashed by the false name Columbus! Columbus means “pigeon”, but the navigator was no pigeon… In the United States there is an economic conspiracy to continue with the name Columbus because of the many printed books, videos and other paraphernalia worthy in sales many millions of dollars! Like in so many fields of endeavor the TRUTH will come to the surface and eventually will triumph!! Cristóvão Colon was the trade name of the discoverer. His natural name was Salvador Fernandes Zarco, born in the southern Portuguese town of Cuba, son of Isabel Gonsalves Zarco...

The National Endowment for the Arts is helping fund the production of a play about going back in time to kill Christopher Columbus. The agency recently awarded $10,000 to the Borderlands Theater, which views people living near or on the U.S. border as “citizens of the world,” for the production entitled “Shooting Columbus.” “A collaborative effort between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Arizona artists will combine elements from interviews with tribal elders and community members with movement, media, and traditional theater for a site-based, immersive, interactive performance,” according to a grant for the project. “The guest artists are members of the Shooting...

THAT VIKINGS crossed the Atlantic long before Christopher Columbus is well established. Their sagas told of expeditions to the coast of today’s Canada: to Helluland, which scholars have identified as Baffin Island or Labrador; Markland (Labrador or Newfoundland) and Vinland (Newfoundland or a territory farther south). In 1960 the remains of Norse buildings were found on Newfoundland.But there was no evidence to prove that anyone outside northern Europe had heard of America until Columbus’s voyage in 1492. Until now. A paper for the academic journal Terrae Incognitae by Paolo Chiesa, a professor of Medieval Latin Literature at Milan University, reveals...

Five hundred years ago, no one suspected the 16th-century vessel the Nao Victoria would become the stuff of legend. In 1519, a Portuguese consul called the Spanish carrack “very old and patched up” and unfit to even “sail … to the Canaries.” Nevertheless, the Nao Victoria was chosen for a five-ship expedition, crewed by 270 men, that would come to be known as one of the most significant journeys in the history of human exploration. The captain of this unprecedented adventure was Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães, anglicized Ferdinand Magellan. On September 20, 1519, he set sail aboard the flagship...

The discovery of a ship, missing for five centuries, in a southwest African desert, filled with gold coins, is one of the most thrilling archaeological finds in recent times. The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation. When it sank in a fierce storm, it was on its way to India laden with treasures like gold and copper ingots. Two...

The British Empire and other major European powers did not significantly enrich themselves through slavery and colonialism but rather may have taken a net loss as a result, a report has asserted. Contrary to narratives pushed by ‘anti-colonialism’ academics and promoted by leftist talking heads, Western capitalism was not built off the backs of colonialism and slavery, fresh research from Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs claims. The head of Political Economy at the IEA argues that while some select elite families within Britain and other colonial powers profited immensely during the time, such gains were not felt...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It was a great legend while it lasted, but DNA testing has finally ended a century-old story of the Hawaiian arrow carved from the bone of British explorer Captain James Cook who died in the Sandwich Islands in 1779. "There is no Cook in the Australian Museum," museum collection manager Jude Philp said on Thursday in announcing the DNA evidence that the arrow was not made from Cook's bone. But that will not stop the museum from continuing to display the arrow in its exhibition, "Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum," which does include a feather cape...

The Industrial Revolution started more than 100 years earlier than previously thought, new research suggests, with Britons already shifting from agricultural work to manufacturing in the 1600s. Seventeenth century Britain can be understood as the start of the Industrial Revolution, laying down the foundations for a shift from an agricultural and crafts-based society to a manufacturing-dominated economy, in which networks of home-based artisans worked with merchants, functioning similarly to factories. The period saw a steep decline in agricultural peasantry and a surge in people who manufactured goods, such as local artisans like blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights, alongside a burgeoning network...

Late last year, a map that could revolutionize our understanding of the origins of modern mapmaking was rediscovered. Created in the aftermath of the Black Death, this map is the fourth oldest surviving complete portolan chart of Europe.This 14th century chart was just rediscovered...it changes map making history8:51 | Geography Geek | 256K subscribers | 89,502 views | December 18, 2023

Names have significance, especially when they’re written in the stars. A group of astronomers is coalescing around an idea to rename two neighbors of the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Named after explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the satellite galaxies are visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. But Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue. The leader of the first expedition to successfully circle the globe, Magellan enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, which set out from Spain in 1519 (SN: 9/17/19). “Because we’re naming things in...

Astronomers have advocated for a renaming of two galaxies, currently named the Large and Small Megellanic Clouds after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, due to his record of “violent colonialism.”

UniSC's Professor Patrick Nunn and Roselyn Kumar didn't set out to rewrite history.They were simply trying to research how India's coastline had changed over the centuries...At some point in the 16th century, the depictions and illustrations of Calicut stopped matching up with the old ones.The river was wrong. So were the boats. Where was the promised great maritime city and the trees heaving with fruit?...It was like Calicut had somehow teleported to a completely different location...The trouble started in 1498 with a man who was no stranger to trouble—Vasco da Gama. Da Gama had been sent by the King of...