“Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.”
— Colón Colón
Columbus wrote this in his ship's log. Behind the words stands a man whom the world considered a madman for a decade. He was wrong about almost everything: the size of the Earth, the distance to Asia, where he had actually landed. But he did what nobody before him had done. Sometimes a miscalculation leads to the discovery of a continent.
For ten years I walked through the courts of Europe begging for money. Portugal said no. England said no. The Spanish commission rejected my plan twice. Scholars said my calculations were wrong. They were right, I had underestimated the size of the Earth by nearly half. But on August 3, 1492, three ships sailed out of Palos. Thirty-three days into the ocean, the crew was ready to mutiny. I promised them three more days. On the second day we saw land. If everyone says you are wrong, it does not mean you should not sail. It means the shore may not be where you thought.