The Math Was Wrong

Columbus didn't prove the Earth was round — educated Europeans already knew that. His real claim was that Asia sat just 2,400 miles west of Europe. The true distance is closer to 12,000 miles. Every serious geographer told him he'd starve at sea, and on the open ocean they would have been right.

He survived only because an entire continent nobody expected was sitting in the way. His miscalculation happened to land him on the shores of the Americas, roughly where he thought Asia would be. The most famous voyage in history was, in effect, a wrong answer that got lucky.