How Did Christopher Columbus Mistake

Christopher Columbus discovered the new world on August 3, 1942 under the sponsorship of the Spanish Monarchy of Isabella and Ferdinand (Present day Spain). Before he was sponsored by Isabella and Ferdinand, however, he went to Portugal the leading sea explorers of the time and asked John II to sponsor his voyage. Isabella and Ferdinand were the only ones that would sponsor his dangerous 31 day trip across the Atlantic ocean in search of a faster route to Asia to get spices.The king called in experts like astronomers and mathematicians to judge the proposal. They turned Columbus down believing that the distances were much farther than Columbus thought. Even though he turned down the proposal King John II secretly sent a ship to test Columbus’s theory it later returned without finding anything. It could be argued, that if Portugal would have funded Columbus the world would be very different today.

When he was still a teenager he got a job on a Merchant ship until 1470 when armed French pirates attacked the ship as it sailed along the Portuguese coast. The ship sank and he swam for the shore of Lisbon, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography, and navigation. While learning these things he began to start making his plan to sail west to make his way around the world. When he made his claims to Portugal and Spain he was off on his distances by thousands of miles. This was a terrible mistake because they were to be well unprepared for the long sea journey ahead of them in the unknown waters. To prevent mutiny, Columbus had two journals. One with a fake distance, and one with a real distance to keep the crew