"Il Milione" — the Exaggerator

According to a popular story, Venetians nicknamed Polo "Il Milione" because they thought he inflated everything by a million. (Some scholars argue the name instead came from Emilione, a branch of the Polo family — but the "million" legend is the one that stuck.) Either way, Venetians laughed at his tales of cities packed with millions of people and treasuries overflowing with silk and gems. He never backed down. On his deathbed, asked to admit he had stretched the truth, he reportedly answered that he had not told half of what he saw.

Columbus Took Notes

Two centuries later, Columbus owned a heavily annotated copy of Polo's book, filling its margins with notes about the goods, lands, and sea routes Polo had described. He was hunting for the rich Asian ports in those pages — and on his voyage west he sailed straight into the Americas instead, still convinced he had reached the edge of Polo's East.