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Maritime history of Portugal

  • Ferdinand MagellanFerdinand Magellan died face down in the surf off a small island called Mactan, killed by a chief named Lapulapu and his men on the 27th of April 1521.
  • Gaspar CorreiaGaspar Correia arrived in Portuguese India around 1512-14 as a soldier, carrying little more than ambition and a sharp eye for the world around him.
  • ManuelineManueline architecture first took shape in Portugal around 1490, and it spent the next three decades carving ropes, anchors, and seaweed into stone church…
  • CarrackThe word carrack emerged in the late 14th century as English borrowed it from Old French caraque. This term itself came from Spanish and Italian carraca…
  • Manuel I of PortugalManuel I of Portugal died on the 13th of December 1521, with Lisbon gripped by an outbreak of the Black Plague. His court had stayed inside Ribeira Palace as…
  • Martin BehaimMartin Behaim, a German cloth merchant from Nuremberg, built the oldest globe known to exist in 1492, the very year Christopher Columbus set sail for what he…
  • Portuguese maritime explorationPortuguese maritime exploration is the story of how a small nation on the western edge of Europe mapped the world's coastlines, opened sea routes to Asia…
  • Factory (trading post)In 1356, a group of merchants from Lübeck established the first formal trading factory in London. This organization operated under the Hanseatic League, a…
  • Fernão Mendes PintoFernão Mendes Pinto left Lisbon on the 11th of March 1537 on a journey that would take him to the bottom of a slave market in Mocha, onto the Great Wall of…
  • Damião de GóisOn the 2nd of February 1502, Damião de Góis entered a world that would shape his entire existence. He was born in Alenquer, Portugal, to Rui Dias de Góis and…