Though he knew the earth was spherical and not flat, how good a navigator he was is debatable. He was actually looking for a path to India and China when he stumbled across America (named after a later discoverer, Amerigo Vespucci).

Columbus denied to his dying day that he detected a new continent. Indeed, the Spanish royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella, twice rejected his entreaties for regal finance of his trips before they succumbed to lobbying and the euphoria of the eradication of the Moslem Moors from Granda in January 1492.

He is a deeply controversial figure. He had a son out of wedlock with his mistress. His second, third, and, possibly, fourth trips were financed by property expropriated from Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. He introduced the slave trade - and a host of incurable epidemics - to the Americas.

He gave his approval to the massacring of natives in abandon. Even his own sponsors found his dangerously self-delusional and overweening.

He was arrested in 1500 and sent back to Spain, in chains throughout the voyage (at his insistence). He was forbidden to ever re-enter Hispaniola. He died a well-off but embittered man.

http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/