1492 to 1815. This is a great story about how America was born. From
sending a surplus population to work in the colonies, to slaves, to a
sovereign nation, here is an abbreviated explanation in seven short
parts. It’s America’s 323-year journey about how America became to be.
America
began with discovery of a land mass. It was the people who paved the
path to becoming a sovereign nation, a supreme power recognized by all
nations.
America’s journey began on August 3, 1492, when
Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer and his crew set sail from
Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
Columbus kept a detailed diary during his first voyage. His entries cover the dates between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492.
Entries noted everything from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather to the moods of his crew.
According to his diary, for months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much
Sailor Cried, Land Ho
Two months later, on October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.
In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain with parrots, balls of cotton, spears and other such items.
Amerigo Vespucci
A few
years later, an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci, set forth the
then revolutionary concept that the lands Christopher Columbus sailed to
in 1492 were part of a separate continent.
Map of the Americas
In
1507, a map created by Martin Waldseemüller was the first to depict
this new continent with the name "America," a Latinized version of
"Amerigo."
America or North America is one of seven continents:
Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australia/Oceania,
Antarctica.
Christopher Columbus had stumbled upon one of the greatest treasures of his life.
The Americas and his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of transatlantic colonization.
Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.