Christopher Columbus was the person who discovered America in 1492.
He was the son of a poor Italian weaver. From his early childhood Columbus was interested in big ships. One day he went off to sea and then made lots of voyages. The seamen of that time didn’t sail far as they knew little of the Atlantic Ocean and didn’t know what was in it or beyond it. When the astronomers declared that the earth was round, Columbus wanted to check it and reach India by sailing to the West.
Being interested in shorter trade routes to India, the Spanish Government gave Columbus three small ships and less than a hundred men so that he could try to carry out his voyage. In 1492 Columbus left Spain on this great expedition. As they sailed West they reached the Canary Islands and the next day they saw land, which was given the name of San Salvador. However, Columbus had no idea that he had discovered a new continent; he thought it was an unknown part of India. He came back to Spain in triumph.
Some time later a man named Amerigo Vespucci explored the same coast as Columbus and found that it wasn’t the coast of India. He said it was a New World. For a long time the land had no special name. Only in 1506, the year of Christopher Columbus’s death, it was named America after Amerigo. However, Columbus was the true discoverer of the continent.
European people came to the New World for various reasons. Some hoped to find gold and silver. Priests and missionaries came to bring the Christian religion to the Indians. Among all, there was a small group of English people called Pilgrims who wanted to start a new life and to have no religious problems they had in England. In 1620 on the ship «Mayflower» they landed in the north-east of America, set up a colony and called that part of the country «New England».