Did you know that at dawn on a day like today, August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus gave the order to weigh anchor at the Port of Palos de la Frontera (Huelva, Spain) to begin the most consequential voyage in maritime history?

Leading the nao Santa María and the caravels La Pinta and La Niña, the expedition set an initial course for the Canary Islands to repair La Pinta's damaged rudder and restock supplies, a departure date that coincided with the absolute chaos at Andalusian docks due to the massive and dramatic expulsion of Spain's Jewish population under the Alhambra Decree.

The great ironic twist of this landmark event is that Columbus died in 1506 firmly convinced that he had reached the eastern fringes of Asia. His actual goal for the voyage initiated that August 3rd was never to find a "New World," but rather to open a direct trade route to the wealthy lands of the Indies, Cathay (China), and Cipango (Japan) described by Marco Polo, which is why he mistakenly labeled the native inhabitants he encountered months later in the Caribbean as "Indians."

Despite his journey culminating in the historic sighting of land on October 12 of that year, the Genoese admiral never accepted nor imagined that he had stumbled upon an entirely different continent. His geographical obsession was so deep that he even forced his crew under oath to declare that Cuba was part of the Asian mainland, leaving it to the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci to decipher, years later, that what began on that August day was actually the encounter with a totally new continent.