On 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish Crown aboard the *Niña*, *Pinta*, and *Santa María*, made landfall in the Bahamas — the first documented European contact with the Americas since Norse expeditions four centuries earlier. Columbus believed he had reached Asia and died in 1506 without understanding the true scale of his discovery.
The voyage initiated the **Columbian Exchange**: the transfer of plants, animals, culture, and disease between the Old and New Worlds. Tomatoes, potatoes, maize, and chocolate reached Europe; horses, smallpox, and measles arrived in the Americas. The consequences for indigenous populations were catastrophic — Old World diseases killed an estimated 90% of the pre-Columbian population within a century.
The expedition opened five centuries of European colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the demographic and cultural transformation of two continents.