On this date in 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on a voyage that would take him to the present-day Americas. His trip financed by Ferdinand of Aragón and Isabella of Castile, Columbus sailed across the Atlantic with three ships — the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria — on a quest to show that one could get to India by sailing west. Columbus and his compatriots made landfall somewhere in the Bahamas. Though he is given credit for "discovering America," he didn't get the land named for him; that honor went to Amerigo Vespucci, who led voyages to the area at around the same time as Columbus. Vespucci reasoned that America was not the eastern part of Asia — as Columbus believed — but a new continent.
