Sæculum
Story · 1492–1607 · 9 chapters

Discovery of the Americas

A century and a half of first contacts

From a Genoese captain with bad maps to the fall of Tenochtitlan — the decades when the world became round, and the peoples who lived on it paid the price.

Chapter 1 of 91492 · Late Middle Ages
1492
Europe · Exploration

Three small ships. The queen has sold her jewels.

Columbus Sails from Palos

August 3, 1492

Three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, dropped down the Tinto river on a morning tide with ninety men and Isabella's signed commission. Columbus believed Japan lay three thousand miles west. He was wrong by about twelve thousand miles. The Atlantic had never been crossed by Europeans on purpose.

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