Christopher Columbus

An italian admiral famous for having discovered the Salvador islands in october 1492. He reached his destination after over 70 days of navigation, and erroneously thought he landed in the eatern Indies, hence the term "Western Indies" to refer to America (which takes the name after another famous italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci) and the use of "Indian" to refer to north american natives. Recently the image of Columbus was defiled by left leaning political agendas that labeled him as a murderous power hungry invader, yet despite this people always forget that without him the modern geopolitical landscape of the New World woudn't exist, including the USA. He was a great man who had the balls to venture through uncharted waters with the ever looming risk to never come back, and he deserves every bit of respect one could possibly give. Also despite Leif Eriksson having discovered modern Terranova 200 years earlier, he never created trade routes nor permanent colonies and thus his contribution to exploration can be considered negligible compared to Columbus.