His first and second voyages
ended in in today's Haiti (the Caribbean) - but on two
subsequent trips he visited today's Venezuela, Nicaragua, Costa Rica,
and Panama. He is buried - maybe - in the Dominican Republic.
Though he knew the earth was spherical and not flat, how good a
navigator he was is debatable. He was actually looking for a path to
India and China when he stumbled across America (named after a later
discoverer, Amerigo Vespucci).
Columbus denied to his dying day that he detected a new continent.
Indeed, the Spanish royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella, twice
rejected his entreaties for regal finance of his trips before they
succumbed to lobbying and the euphoria of the eradication of the
Moslem Moors from Granda in January 1492.
He is a deeply controversial figure. He had a son out of wedlock with
his mistress. His second, third, and, possibly, fourth trips were
financed by property expropriated from Jews exiled from Spain in 1492.
He introduced the slave trade - and a host of incurable epidemics - to
the Americas.
He gave his approval to the massacring of natives in abandon. Even his
own sponsors found his dangerously self-delusional and overweening.
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