There were all kinds of things that lived in the ocean. They were also out there for the first time in a area that hadn’t been mapped before. They were understandably fearful.

In a sense, we remember him because he’s a guy that made a mistake but had good luck, … Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World.

But he happened to run into Caribbean islands [full of] gold. The gold had actually come to the surface and was in the rivers. It was very easily accessible.

It is true that a lot of ordinary people thought the world was flat. But in Portugal [where Columbus trained as a sailor] the first thing that they did was a little demonstration to prove...