Christopher Columbus was probably one of the greatest explorers of all time. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451 to a weaver, Christopher Columbus first went to sea at the age of fourteen. As a young man, he settled in Portugal and married a woman of noble background. After his wife’s death in 1485, Columbus and his young son Diego moved to Spain. Like everyone else in his time, Columbus knew the world was round. He theorized that since the earth was a sphere, you could eventually reach the Far East from the opposite direction, he thought to establish trade routes to Asia in this manner. The fifteenth century Europeans