Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. Despite Columbus being his English name, his real name might have been something like Cristoffa Coromboro. Once at an early age and before moving to Lisbon, Portugal in 1477, he decided to leave home and went to sea. He used to help rich trading families from his hometown to do business and he also traveled to many places, from West Africa to Ireland. At that time, Europeans wanted to buy things such as spices and silk from China and other countries in the Far East. Nevertheless, traveling across the land was unsafe, and sailing around southern Africa took a long time. People started to wonder if there was another way to get to the eastern area which they called "the Indies''. So, Columbus planned to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean to find a route to the Indies, but he needed money. He asked the kings of Portugal, Genoa, and Venice to help, but they all refused. Finally, in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain decided to pay for the voyage. Later, Columbus left Spain with three ships on 3 August 1492. The wind helped him to have a good trip, and on 12 October, he and his men arrived at an island in the Bahamas in the Caribbean. He called the people that he found "Indians' ' because he believed he had arrived in the Indies. He went back to Europe in March 1493, and he took some turkeys, pineapples, and Indian prisoners with him. Then, Columbus had three more trips to explore the New World and some Spanish colonists went with him and settled down on the islands discovered. He became a governor, but he was not a good leader. He died in 1506, and he still believed that the lands he had discovered were part of Asia. After his death, his body was moved several times, and nowadays part of his body is in the "The Columbus Lighthouse '' in the Dominican Republic. Columbus’ voyages established a relationship between Europeans and the Americas. However, at that time he enslaved the Indians he met and brought new diseases to the New World, causing many deaths as a result. It is said that Columbus wasn’t the first European to reach the Americas due to the Vikings exploring the Canadian coast almost 500 years before.