Bartolomeu dias fun facts

In , Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias c. It also prompted Genoan explorer Christopher Columbus , then living in Portugal, to seek a new royal patron for a mission to establish his own sea route to the Far East. Dias dropped off the Africans at different ports along the coastline of Africa with supplies of gold and silver and messages of goodwill from the Portuguese to the indigenous people. Dias is thought to have ordered a turn to the south of about 28 degrees, probably because he had prior knowledge of southeasterly winds that would take him around the tip of Africa and keep his ships from being dashed on the notoriously rocky shoreline. The crew spotted landfall on February 3, , about miles east of present-day Cape of Good Hope. Dias ventured further along the coastline, but his crew was nervous about the dwindling food supplies and urged him to turn back.

Bartolomeu Dias was one of the first explorers since Henry the Navigator to begin expanding the Portuguese Empire. Portugal would become the first global empire with colonies throughout India, South America and coastal areas of Africa. They would open trade with India for the first time since the Ottomans captured Constantinople. Once opened up they became one of the wealthiest nations in Europe.

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese explorer. He was the first man to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. Dias did not set out on the journeys which made him famous until he was in his thirties. Also, he had only made a single voyage aboard a warship.

It is not known when or where Bartolomeu Dias was born, and no information has survived about his early life. The King instructed Dias to discover a sea route to India which bypassed Moslem-dominated routes between the East and Europe and to seek information about the Christian empire of Abyssinia. In command of two caravels, each of about modern tons, and of a storeship of about double that size, Dias left the Tagus River in August