Who opened the great expedition?

On August 3, 1492, the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set out from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, with three ships—the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—in search of a direct western route to Asia. He encountered instead an unspoiled, untouched continent—the Bahamas in the Caribbean Sea—that lay far to the west of the Asian coast. Columbus made three more trips to the New World, but he never realized his original goal.