"In fourteen hundred and ninety two Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
Exploration has been a key thing in the development of society. Even today, despite every square inch of land being marked with intricate detail, we still know little about the surface of the oceans, 22 miles under the surface of the huge oceans. Yet the oceans cover more than half of the planet, so in reality, more areas of our planet remain unexplored than explored.
In 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian, became the first man to see Earth from Space. He reported the first visual proof that the Earth was round, although for two-hundred and fifty years we had known that to be so, and we attribute this to one brave and determined sailor, and that sailor is Christopher Columbus.
His sponsors, the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, sponsered him not because they thought he would succeed, but that if he did succeed the treasures that would result would outweigh the cost of paying for the voyage, that was very small anyway. And as Columbus' three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, dissappeared over the horizon on August 2, 1492, everyone thought that would be the end of the three ships, Columbus and all 89 other members of his crew.
It was a time of high superstition where people believed huge sea monsters, many times the size of the largest of ships, swam in the Ocean Sea (now called The Atlantic), and that the world was flat, which meant that Columbus would simply sail to the edge and fall off.
Imagine the amazement as the same three ships, and the same 90 members of crew landed at the Spanish port, with news of a new continent - a new world.