A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
> But it could help explain why Columbus, a Genoese, was prepared to set off across what most contemporaries considered a landless void.<p>I had always thought that Columbus made the trip because he miscalculated the distance around the globe, while everyone else was saying they'd starve before reaching Asia.  He was just lucky enough there happened to be land halfway there, and then mistakenly assumed he made it, since the Caribbean was where he wrongly thought Asia was going to be.