"Patricia Seed" is an American people/American historian and professor in the University of California, Irvine's Department of History. She specializes in the history of cartography and navigation, and is the foremost authority on latitude as it relates to the historical use of maps in Age of Discovery/maritime exploration.

More Patricia Seed on Wikipedia.

It is true that a lot of ordinary people thought the world was flat. But in Portugal [where Columbus trained as a sailor] the first thing that they did was a little demonstration to prove that the Earth was round. All of the scientists and intellectuals believed that the Earth was round.

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But he happened to run into Caribbean islands [full of] gold. The gold had actually come to the surface and was in the rivers. It was very easily accessible.

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In a sense, we remember him because he's a guy that made a mistake but had good luck, ... Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World.

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