Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese noble, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Port...

Martin Waldseemüller was a German cartographer and humanist scholar. Sometimes known by the Latinized form of his name, Hylacomylus, his work was influential among contemporary cartographers. He and his collaborator Matthias Ringmann are cr...

Pánfilo de Narváez (1470 or 1478 - 1528) was a Spanish conquistador and soldier in the Americas. Born in Spain, he first embarked to Jamaica in 1510 as a soldier. He came to participate in the conquest of Cuba and led an expedition to Camag...

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a Spanish conquistador who founded the colony of Darién in Panama, the oldest extant European settlement in the mainland of the Americas. He crossed the Isthmus in search of gold, reaching the Pacific Ocean after a...

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba is usually reputed as the founder of Nicaragua, and in fact he founded two important Nicaraguan cities, Granada and León. The currency of Nicaragua is named the córdoba in his memory. Cordoba was an officer of...

Diego de Almagro, also known as El Adelantado and El Viejo (The Elder), was a Spanish conquistador and a companion and later rival of Francisco Pizarro. He participated in the Spanish conquest of Peru and is credited as the first European d...

Francisco Pizarro was a Conquistador who seized the Inca empire for Spain. In 1510 he enrolled in an expedition of exploration in the New World, and three years later he joined Vasco Núñez de Balboa on the expedition that discovered the Pac...

Juan Sebastián Elcano was a Basque navigator, subject of the Kingdom of Castile. He is best known for completing the first world circumnavigation in History. Elcano was a naval commander subject of Charles I of Castile and he completed the...

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés was a Spanish historian and writer. He is commonly known as "Oviedo" even though his family name is Fernández. He participated in the Spanish colonization of the Caribbean, and wrote a long chronicle of...

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Spanish expedition to the East Indies that resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano. He was born in a still disputed location i...

Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian explorer of North America, in the service of the French crown. He is renowned as the first European since the Norse expeditions to North America around AD 1000 to explore the Atlantic coast of North Ame...

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Cas...

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish explorer of the New World, and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across what is now the US Southwest, he became a trader and faith healer to variou...

Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán was a Spanish conquistador and colonial administrator in New Spain. He was Governor of the province of Pánuco from 1525–1533, and of Nueva Galicia from 1529–1534, President of the first Audiencia from 1528-30. He foun...

Jacques Cartier was a French navigator who first explored and described the Gulf of St-Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named Canada. In 1534, Jacques Cartier set sail hoping to discover a western passage to the...