Magellan's expedition around the world.
After the bold enterprises of Vasco da Gama and Columbus, an expedition headed by Magellan succeeded in circumnavigating the globe. There was now no reason why the new lands should not become more and more familiar to the European nations. The coast of North America was explored principally by English navigators, who for over a century pressed north, still in the vain hope of finding a northwest passage to the spice islands.
The Spanish conquests in America.
Cortez began the Spanish conquests in the western world by undertaking the subjugation of the Aztec empire in Mexico in 1519. A few years later Pizarro established the Spanish power in Peru. It is hardly necessary to say that Europeans exhibited an utter disregard for the rights of the people with whom they came in contact, and treated them with contemptuous cruelty. Spain now superseded Portugal as a maritime power and her importance in the sixteenth century is to be attributed largely to the wealth which came to her from her possessions in the New World.
The Spanish main.
By the end of the century the Spanish main—i.e., the northern coast of South America—was much frequented by adventurous seamen, who combined in about equal parts the occupations of merchant, slaver, and pirate. Many of these hailed from English ports, and it is to them that England owes the beginning of her commercial greatness.[248]
Copernicus (1473–1543) discovers that the earth is not the center of the universe.
128. While Columbus and the Portuguese navigators were bringing hitherto unknown regions of the earth to the knowledge of Europe, a Polish astronomer, Kopernik (commonly known by his Latinized name, Copernicus), was reaching the conclusion that the ancient writers had been misled in supposing that the earth was the center of the universe. He discovered that, with the other planets, the earth revolved about the sun. This opened the way to an entirely new conception of the heavenly bodies and their motions, which has formed the basis of modern astronomy.
It was naturally a great shock to men to have it suggested that their dwelling place, instead of being God's greatest work to which He had subordinated everything, was but a tiny speck in comparison to the whole universe, and its sun but one of an innumerable host of similar bodies, each of which might have its particular family of planets revolving about it. Theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, declared the statements of Copernicus foolish and wicked and contrary to the teachings of the Bible. He was prudent enough to defer the publication of his great work until just before his death; he thus escaped any persecution to which his discovery might have subjected him.