When the great Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492, he was hoping to find a western sea route to China. He hoped that sailing there would be quicker and safer than travelling overland along the Silk Road.
[Like other Europeans of his day, Columbus had no idea that the Americas and the islands of the West Indies lay between him and China.]
*[The first European to sail to India was Portugal's Vasco da Gama, in 1497-98. Unlike Columbus, he headed south around Africa and then east, not west.]
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