Originally Posted by
alan s
Another one of your "facts?"
Actually, it's true.
Columbus figured that China was about 3,000 miles west of Spain - pretty much the very limit of how far his ships could sail. The reason no one wanted to sail west was because Eratosthenes had established the Earth's circumference at about 25,000 miles/40,000 km almost 2,000 years earlier - and they knew that they couldn't make it to China that way - it was too far.
Ferdinand and Isabella probably gave Columbus his ships just to get rid of him.
Luckily for him, there actually was a continent about 3,000 miles west of Spain.