Exploration
In the Pacific Ocean, Jorge de Menezes (c. 1498–?), discovered Papua New Guinea. García Jofre de Loaísa (1490–1526), discovered the Marshall Islands. Explorations of the Americas began with the initial discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), who led a Castilian (Spanish) expedition across the Atlantic, discovering America. After the discovery of America by Columbus, a number of important expeditions were sent out to explore the Western Hemisphere. This included Juan Ponce de León (1474–1521), who discovered and mapped the coast of Florida; Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519), who was the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from American shores (after crossing the Isthmus of Panama) confirming that America was a separate continent from Asia; Aleixo Garcia (14?–1527), who explored the territories of present-day southern Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, crossing the Chaco and reaching the Andes (near Sucre).
North Ludlow Beamish
After quitting Hanover Beamish devoted much attention to Norse antiquities, and in 1841 published a summary of the researches of Professor Carl Christian Rafn, relative to the discovery of America by the Northmen in the tenth century. Although the fact had been notified as early as 1828 (in a letter in Niles' Register, Boston, U.S.), it was very little known. Beamish's modest volume not only popularised the discovery by epitomising the principal details in Rafn's great work "Antiquitates Americanæ" (Copenhagen, 1837), but it contains, in the shape of translations from the Sagas, one of the best summaries of Icelandic historical literature anywhere to be found within an equal space. Beamish, like his younger brother, Richard, who was at one time in the Grenadier guards, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an associate of various learned bodies.