Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 into a noble Portuguese family. His parents died when he was still a boy and he became a court page in Lisbon. In 1505, he enlisted in the fleet of the ... During the Age of Exploration, one task was particularly noteworthy: the circumnavigation of Earth. Discover the life of Ferdinand Magellan and the first voyage around the world. Ferdinand Magellan , Portuguese navigator and explorer. From Spain he sailed around South America, discovering the Strait of Magellan , and across the Pacific. Though he was killed in the Philippines, one of his ships continued westward to Spain, accomplishing the first circumnavigation of Earth. Ferdinand Magellan was a man both admired and doomed by his own conviction. A Portuguese navigator in Spanish service, he became synonymous with daring exploration, political defiance, and human endurance at its limit. His name is tied to the first circumnavigation of the globe, though, in a tragic twist, he did not live to see it completed. Magellan represents that familiar type in history: the brilliant obsessive. He was right about the world’s size and the shape of its oceans, but his ...
