Christopher Columbus
Genoese navigator: four voyages opened the Americas to Europe
He put to sea on 3 August 1492—the day after the term of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain ran out. There is more Jewish in his voyage than appears. The money was found by Luis de Santángel, a converso of Aragon; the interpreter taken along was Luis de Torres, baptized a few days before sailing, because he knew Hebrew and Aramaic—the languages they hoped to use with the lost tribes; and the reckoning was done by the tables of Abraham Zacuto, whose Almanach Perpetuum Columbus kept by him and by which in 1504 he predicted an eclipse to the Jamaican Indians.
But Columbus's own Jewish descent is a conjecture with no document behind it, and it must not be printed. His birth is known to within ten weeks: between 25 August and 31 October 1451.
Sources
Scholarship
- Wikipedia, “Christopher Columbus” — the 1451 birth window; the sailing of 3 August 1492
Basis: documents and evidence.