Famous Days for Students of English

12-10-1492

It is the summer of 1492. Three small ships are preparing for a journey across the ocean in Spain. There are 100 men on board and they are commanded by Christopher Columbus.

This experienced sailor says that the Earth is round, and Asia can be reached by ship when people go across the Atlantic Ocean. People in Europe want to go to Asia because they want to do business there.

The men on the ships don’t know that Columbus’s main calculation is wrong and that the journey to Asia is three times longer than Columbus thinks.

It’s October 7 and the expedition is at sea for 29 days without seeing any land. Yet on that day, the men also see big groups of birds in the sky. At that moment Columbus changes the course and follows the birds.

Five days later, on October 12, 1492, the men finally see land. The land is one of the islands in the Bahamas. When they explore the island, they meet locals. Columbus calls them Indians because he thinks that he is in Asia.

Difficult words: command (to give orders to a group of people), main (the most important), calculation (when you try to figure out the size of something), without (with no), call (to give a name).