Ferdinand Magellan Sets Sail to Circumnavigate Globe (1519)

In 1518, Spanish king Charles I approved navigator Ferdinand Magellan's plan to sail to the Spice Islands by a western route. On the way, Magellan crossed the "Sea of the South" and renamed it the Pacific Ocean because of the calm crossing. His ambitious voyage proved definitively the roundness of the Earth and revealed the Americas as a new world, separate from Asia. Though Magellan is often credited with being the first to circumnavigate the globe, he never actually returned to Europe. Why? More...

Long journeys used to be so extremely hazardous. Much better to have stayed home.

Magellan was a staunch Christian evangelist—and this may have cost him his life.

Although it was never an official part of his mission, Magellan took great pains to convert all the indigenous peoples he encountered to Christianity. The most notable example came in April 1521 in the Philippines, where he baptized King Humabon of Cebu along with thousands of his subjects. Magellan’s religious fervor was so strong that he threatened to kill those chieftains that resisted converting to Christianity, and this harsh decree ultimately proved to be his downfall. When a king named Lapu-Lapu refused to convert, Magellan’s men burned his village on the island of Mactan. Magellan later returned to Mactan with 49 men and demanded that Lapu-Lapu yield to his authority. The king refused, and in the ensuing battle Magellan was killed after he was struck by a spear and then repeatedly stabbed by the islanders’ cutlasses and scimitars. In the Philippines, where Magellan is remembered as a tyrant rather than a hero, the Battle of Mactan is reenacted every April 27, with a well-known Filipino actor playing the role of Lapu-Lapu.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-surprising-facts-about-magellans-circumnavigation-of-the-globe

Magellan Strait.