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Mistakes That Helped Shape U.S. into What it Is Today

Khalid Elhassan October 16, 2019 34 min

22. The Americas Were Discovered Because of a Math Mistake

Christopher Columbus thought he was less than 3000 miles away from Japan when he sailed westward from Spain in 1492. Not much further past Japan, he would reach the Indies, with their rich spice trade. In reality, Japan is about 12,000 miles away from Spain, not 3000. Columbus thought it was much closer because he erred in calculating the size of the globe, and concluded it was far smaller than it actually is.

Contrary to myth, neither Columbus nor his crew feared that they might fall off the edge of the world. The Ancient Greeks knew the earth was a globe two millennia earlier, and educated people and sailors in Columbus’ day had no illusions about the earth being flat. The issue for Columbus was not the shape of the earth, but the size of the ocean he planned on crossing. In addition to screwing up the calculations, he did not know that an unknown continental landmass lay between Spain and Asia.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.