Christopher Columbus

The Genoese navigator's 1492 voyage under the Spanish crown landed him in the Bahamas, initiating sustained contact between Europe and the Americas that would permanently reshape the entire world. Columbus made four transatlantic voyages between 1492 and 1504, exploring the Caribbean and the coast of Central and South America. Whatever the moral complexity of his legacy — and it is profound — no single journey in recorded history changed the trajectory of human civilisation more dramatically than his first crossing of the Atlantic.