Ferdinand Magellan

In 1518, he married his countryman friend Diogo Barbosa’s daughter, Maria Caldera Beatriz Barbosa, in Seville. The couple had two sons – Rodrigo de Magalhaes and Carlos de Magalhaes, both dying in childhood.

While fighting the chieftain on the Mactan Island, he assumed to finish off the war with his powerful European weapons, but was attacked with a bamboo spear and killed on April 27, 1521.

Three craters– Magelhaens and Magelhaens A on the moon and Magelhaens on Mars, have been named after him by the International Astronomical Union.

Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480, either in Vila Nova de Gaia, near Porto, or Sabrosa, near Vila Real, to Rodrigo de Magalhaes and Alda de Mesquita.

His parents died when he was ten years old, and hence, went to the Portuguese court to serve as a page to Queen Leonora, along with his brother Diogo, mainly because of his parents’ wealthy Portuguese connections.

He was educated at the Queen’s School of Pages, Lisbon, and was fortunate to get accustomed to subjects, such as astronomy, cartography, and celestial navigation, which proved useful in his later pursuits.

In 1505, he joined a Portuguese fleet under Francisco de Almeida, first viceroy of Portuguese in India, to an expedition to India and Africa where he spent seven years.

He fought in several battles, such as Battle of Cannanore (1506) wounding himself and Battle of Diu (1509), where the Portuguese destroyed Egyptian ships in the Arabian Sea.

In 1511, he was enlisted in Afonso de Albuquerque’s fleet in the conquest of Malacca, on the Malay Peninsula, thereby getting hold of important trade routes in the region.

He traveled further and explored the Moluccas, known as the Spice Islands (now part of Indonesia), home to some of the world’s most expensive spices, including cloves and nutmeg.

He returned to Lisbon in mid-1513 where he joined the massive 500-ship, 15,000-soldier force sent to Morocco, by King Manuel, to fight the governor as he had refused to pay an annual tribute to the Portuguese.

He crossed the 373-mile passage from Cape Virgenes at the tip of South America in November 1520, which is today popularly known as the Strait of Magellan.

He named the new waters ‘Mar Pacifico’ meaning ‘peaceful’, as he entered, in November 1520, upon crossing through the Strait of Magellan from the Atlantic Ocean, which is today called the Pacific Ocean.

Even though he was killed midway, his crewmember Juan Sebastian Elcano continued the journey, thus completing the first ever circumnavigation of the world and proving that the globe is round.