After sailing for five weeks from the Canaries, Columbus and the Pinzón brothers step ashore in the Bahamas

Columbus and his fellow explorers make landfall on the largest of the Caribbean islands, Cuba

Columbus returns to Spain, landing at Palos with news of his great discoveries

Henry VII commissions the Italian navigator John Cabot to cross the Atlantic in search of new territories for England

John Cabot, searching for a trade route to China, probably reaches Newfoundland

Vasco da Gama reaches the southern coast of India, at Calicut, after sailing across the Indian Ocean from east Africa

Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral, with a fleet of thirteen ships, makes landfall in Brazil

The Inca empire has about 25,000 miles of well-serviced roads, designed for caravans of llamas

Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sets sail from Lisbon to explore to the south of the New World

The editor of a pamphlet proposes that the recently found continent should be named America after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci

Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches the Pacific coast and claims the ocean for the king of Spain

Ferdinand Magellan and a small fleet depart from Seville, attempting to sail round the world

Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan crosses the Pacific in ninety-nine days and reaches Guam

Ferdinand Magellan is killed in the Philippines, in a skirmish with natives

One surviving ship of Magellan's fleet, the Victoria, returns to Sanlucar, in Spain, with Sebastian Cano in command

French explorer Jacques Cartier charts the Gulf of St Lawrence and, in 1525, explores up the river as far as Montreal

Cartier, welcomed by the Huron Indians, gives their island in the St Lawrence river the name of Montreal

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado penetrates far north and west of Texas in an expedition searching for gold

Discovery of the Solomon Islands by a Spanish ship prompts interest in a possible Terra Australis Incognita ('unknown southern land')

English sailor and slave-trader John Hawkins turns the top-heavy carrack into the more seaworthy galleon

Francis Drake sails from Plymouth, heading west for the Pacific and the East Indies

Francis Drake returns to England after his three-year voyage round the world and is knighted by Queen Elizabeth on board his Golden Hind

Willem Barents sets off on the first of his three expeditions to find a passage to the east through the waters north of Russia

Henry Hudson reaches the inlet of New York Bay and explores the river now known by his name

Henry Hudson, after wintering in Hudson Bay, is set adrift in an open boat by his mutinous crew