On April 17, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile, signed the Capitulations of Santa Fe, the agreement by which Christopher Columbus, one-time wool-weaving apprentice in Savona, Italy, undertook a voyage of discovery to the western Atlantic.

Columbus was in his forty-first year. After forsaking his father’s loom in Savona he had spent some nine years in obscurity in Portugal, where his only known occupations were those of petty trader in sugar for an Italian commercial firm and maker and purveyor of maps and marine charts in collaboration with his younger brother Bartolomé. During this period he married a poor but aristocratic young Portuguese woman who bore him a son; he also supposedly made one or more sea voyages in an unidentified capacity.

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