The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland.
The first European to discover the Falls was the Spanish Conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541, after whom one of the falls on the Argentine side is named.
European explorers, first the Portuguese in search of the Spice Islands (Indonesia) and then the Spanish, reached the Carolines in the sixteenth century.
The first depiction of Terra Australis on a globe was probably on Johannes Schöner’s lost 1523 globe on which Oronce Fine is thought to have based his 1531 map of the world.
On 15 March 1503, Vasco da Gama, crossing from India to East Africa, sighted what was almost certainly Silhouette Island and the next day, Desroches Island. The granitic islands began to appear on Portuguese charts as the Seven Sisters.
A year later Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage, sailing south and eastward from upper Central America, explored Bocas del Toro, Veragua, the Chagres River and Portobelo (Beautiful Port) which he named.
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia.
An international team of researchers spent 4 years on a study which shows conclusively that the earliest evidence for human colonization is about 1280-1300 C.E.
The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue describing Polo’s travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.
Erik Thorvaldsson (c. 950 – c. 1003), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer, described in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first settlement in Greenland.
