in what year did columbus sail to the new world?
1492 Conquest of Paradise
entailment
 Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas for the Kingdom of Castile and León in 1492 . By 1580 this had unified with neighbouring kingdoms to form one Spanish kingdom . Private adventurers thereafter entered into contracts with the Spanish Crown to conquer the newly discovered lands in return for tax revenues and the power to rule . In the first decades after the discovery , the Spanish colonised the Caribbean and established a centre of operations on the island of Cuba . They heard rumours of the rich empire of the Aztecs on the mainland to the west and , in 1519 , Hernán Cortés set sail with eleven ships to explore the Mexican coast . By August 1521 the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had fallen to the Spanish . Within three years of the fall of Tenochtitlan the Spanish had conquered a large part of Mexico , extending as far south as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec . The newly conquered territory became New Spain , headed by a viceroy who answered to the Spanish Crown via the Council of the Indies . Cortés despatched Pedro de Alvarado with an army to conquer the Mesoamerican kingdoms of the Guatemalan Sierra Madre and neighbouring Pacific plain ; the military phase of the establishment of the Spanish colony of Guatemala lasted from 1524 to 1541 . The Captaincy General of Guatemala had its capital at Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala and covered a wide territory that also included the Mexican state of Chiapas as well as El Salvador , Honduras and Costa Rica . The Spanish imposed colonial rule over Yucatán between 1527 and 1546 , and over Verapaz from the 16th to the 17th centuries , leaving the area between – essentially Petén and much of Belize – independent long after surrounding peoples had been subjugated . 

entailment
 Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for the Kingdom of Castile and Leon in 1492 . Private adventurers thereafter entered into contracts with the Spanish Crown to conquer the newly discovered lands in return for tax revenues and the power to rule . In the first decades after the discovery of the new lands , the Spanish colonised the Caribbean and established a centre of operations on the island of Cuba . They heard rumours of the rich empire of the Aztecs on the mainland to the west and , in 1519 , Hernán Cortés set sail with eleven ships to explore the Mexican coast . By August 1521 the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had fallen to the Spanish . A single soldier arriving in Mexico in 1520 was carrying smallpox and thus initiated the devastating plagues that swept through the native populations of the Americas . Within three years of the fall of Tenochtitlan the Spanish had conquered a large part of Mexico , extending as far south as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec . The newly conquered territory became New Spain , headed by a viceroy who answered to the king of Spain via the Council of the Indies . Hernán Cortés received reports of rich , populated lands to the south and dispatched Pedro de Alvarado to investigate the region . 

entailment
 Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for the Kingdom of Castile and Leon in 1492 . Private adventurers thereafter entered into contracts with the Spanish Crown to conquer the newly discovered lands in return for tax revenues and the power to rule . In the first decades after the discovery of the new lands , the Spanish colonised the Caribbean and established a centre of operations on the island of Cuba . By August 1521 the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had fallen to the Spanish . Within three years of the fall of Tenochtitlan the Spanish had conquered a large part of Mexico , extending as far south as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec . The newly conquered territory became New Spain , headed by a viceroy who answered to the king of Spain via the Council of the Indies . 

entailment
 From 1499 to 1508 a number of other expeditions were launched from Bristol to the ' New found land ' , the earliest being undertaken by William Weston . One of these , led by John Cabot 's son , Sebastian Cabot , explored down the coast of North America until he was ‘ almost in the latitude of Gibraltar ’ and ‘ almost the longitude of Cuba ’ . This would suggest that he reached as far as the Chesapeake , close to what is now Washington D.C. 

entailment
 Upon completion , the ship left on 28 October 1613 for Acapulco with around 180 people on board , including 10 samurai of the Shogun ( provided by the Minister of the Navy Mukai Shogen Tadakatsu ) , 12 samurai from Sendai , 120 Japanese merchants , sailors , and servants , and around 40 Spaniards and Portuguese , including Sebastian Vizcaino who , in his own words , only had the quality of a passenger . 
