30 Facts About Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific Ocean to open a maritime trade route, during which he discovered the interoceanic passage bearing thereafter his name and achieved the first European navigation from the Atlantic to Asia.

Ferdinand Magellan was made Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire.

Ferdinand Magellan was brought up as a page of Queen Eleanor, consort of King John II.

Ferdinand Magellan participated in several battles, including the battle of Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded, and the Battle of Diu in 1509.

Ferdinand Magellan later sailed under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, with Francisco Serrao, his friend and possibly cousin.

Ferdinand Magellan had a crucial role, warning Sequeira and risking his life to rescue Francisco Serrao and others who had landed.

Ferdinand Magellan married a woman from Amboina and became a military advisor to the Sultan of Ternate, Bayan Sirrullah.

Ferdinand Magellan was accused of trading illegally with the Moors.

Meanwhile, Ferdinand Magellan devoted himself to studying the most recent charts, investigating, in partnership with cosmographer Rui Faleiro, a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific and the possibility that the Moluccas were Spanish under the demarcations of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Ferdinand Magellan instead proposed to seek a southwestern passage around South America to reach the Spice Islands by a western route, a feat never before accomplished.

Bergreen further states that Ferdinand Magellan claimed to Charles that his Malaccan or Sumatran slave Enrique had been a native of the Spice Islands and used Enrique and letters from Serrao to "prove" that the islands were so far east that they would fall within the Spanish sphere of influence if the world were truly to be divided in half.

Ferdinand Magellan's fleet consisted of five ships carrying supplies for two years of travel.

Ferdinand Magellan barely managed to quell the mutiny, despite at one point losing control of three of his five ships to the mutineers.

Mendoza was killed during the conflict, and Ferdinand Magellan sentenced Quesada and Cartagena to being beheaded and marooned, respectively.

Three days later, they found a bay which eventually led them to a strait, now known as the Strait of Ferdinand Magellan, which allowed them passage through to the Pacific.

Ferdinand Magellan himself remained healthy, perhaps because of his personal supply of preserved quince.

Ferdinand Magellan sent a raiding party ashore to retaliate, killing several Chamorro men, burning their houses, and recovering the stolen goods.

Ferdinand Magellan befriended the tattooed locals of the neighboring island of Suluan and traded goods and supplies and learned of the names of neighboring islands and local customs.

Ferdinand Magellan met with the King of Cebu, Rajah Humabon, who asked them for tribute as a trade, thinking they were traders bartering with them.

Ferdinand Magellan then gave the image of the Child Jesus, along with an image of the Virgin Mary, and a small cross to the queen as a gesture of goodwill for accepting the new faith.

Nothing of Ferdinand Magellan's body survived, that afternoon the grieving rajah-king, hoping to recover his remains, offered Mactan's victorious chief a handsome ransom of copper and iron for them but Datu Lapulapu refused.

Ferdinand Magellan intended to keep the body as a war trophy.

In Spain, Ferdinand Magellan's reputation suffered due to the largely unflattering accounts of his actions given by the survivors of the expedition.

Ferdinand Magellan brought sailors Francisco Albo and Hernando de Bustamante, pointedly not including Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's chronicler.

One of the few survivors loyal to Ferdinand Magellan was Antonio Pigafetta.

Ferdinand Magellan was a magnificent practical seaman, who understood navigation better than all his pilots.

Ferdinand Magellan has come to be renowned for his navigational skill and tenacity.

Ferdinand Magellan named the Pacific Ocean, and lends his name to the Strait of Ferdinand Magellan.

Ferdinand Magellan's name has since been applied to a variety of other entities, including the Magellanic Clouds, Project Magellan, and NASA's Magellan spacecraft.

Since Ferdinand Magellan was the one who began it, Portugal wanted to recognize a Portuguese explorer, and Spain feared Basque nationalism.