Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian explorer. Columbus was born in Genoa to a wool weaver's family. He went to sea at the age of 10 but by age 22 had started an apprenticeship as a business agent for several important Geonoese families. Based on flawed assumptions of geography and even worse mathematics, Columbus calculated that a westward route from the Canary Islands to Japan would be a mere 3700km (as opposed to the true 19600km), and proposed an expedition to prove this. He eventually secured the support of Queen Isabella I of Spain and in 1492 arrived in the Bahamas, Hispaniola and Cuba. Over a further three voyages he discovered much of the Caribbean and the coast of the southern Gulf of Mexico. This woodcut comes from van Opmeer's Opus chronologicum orbis universi, published at Antwerp in 1611.