History of Madagascar
By the 15th century, Europeans had wrested control of the spice trade from the Muslims. They did this by bypassing the Middle East and sending their cargo-ships around the Cape of Good Hope to India. The Portuguese mariner Diogo Dias became the first European to set foot on Madagascar when his ship, bound for India, blew off course in 1500. In the ensuing two-hundred years, the English and French tried (and failed) to establish settlements on the island.
Mariana Islands
The first European to see the island group was the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who on March 6, 1521, observed a string of islands and sailed between two of them during a Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation. Historically, the southern village of Umatac, Guam has been credited as the site of Magellan's landing, however, scholarly study of the navigator's diary, now kept in preservation in the Philippines, revealed a drawing of the islands with a tiny island to the south of a much larger island above it. The described placement of the islands made it much more likely that Magellan had actually sailed between Guam and Cocos Island, and not Guam and Rota, as originally thought. This discovery meant that Magellan could not have landed in Umatac, but more likely in a northern location like Tanguisson or Tumon Bay.