Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to gene...

Ferdinand II, called the Catholic, was in his own right the King of Sicily from 1468 and King of Aragon from 1479. As a consequence of his marriage to Isabella I, he was King of Castile jure uxoris as Ferdinand V from 1474 until her death i...

In 1492, a Spanish-based transatlantic maritime expedition led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus encountered the Americas, continents which were virtually unknown to and outside of the Old World political and economic system. The fou...

Nikolaus Federmann was a German adventurer and conquistador in the colonies of Venezuela and Colombia. He worked in the service of the Welser brothers. Nikolaus Federmann was born in Ulm (Baden-Württemberg) around 1505. In 1529 he was sent...

Charles III (Spanish: Carlos III; Italian: Carlo III) was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese. In 1731, the fifteen-year-...

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias was an amphibious military engagement between the forces of Britain under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon and Spain under Admiral Blas de Lezo. It took place at the city of Cartagena de Indias in March 1741, in...

Alexander von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational...

Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of...

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques) was a French American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in t...

The Chilean War of Independence was a war between pro-independence Chilean criollos seeking political and economic independence from Spain and royalist criollos supporting continued allegiance to the Captaincy General of Chile and membershi...

The Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and the Centralist Republic of Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 183...

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century...