September 20, 2019

On Sept. 20, 1519, 500 years ago today, the Portuguese sea captain Ferdinand Magellan sailed westward from Spain with a small fleet, hoping to find an alternate sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan reached and crossed the Pacific Ocean, but he never saw the Spice Islands—nor did he live to finish the voyage. Members of his crew, however, returned to Spain from the east, becoming the first people to circumnavigate (sail all the way around) the world. Many scholars consider the voyage the greatest navigational feat in history.

The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition that sailed around the world. This engraving shows Magellan and his crew in October 1520 as they sail through the strait that separates the islands of Tierra del Fuego from mainland South America. The Strait of Magellan, as it is now called, provided a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Credit: Discovery of The Magellan-Strait (1880), colored wood engraving by unknown artist (© SuperStock)

Magellan, an experienced seaman and soldier, studied astronomy and navigation. His studies convinced him that he could reach the Spice Islands by sailing west around the southern tip of South America. He believed such a route would be shorter than the eastward voyage around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. Magellan asked the king of Portugal to support the voyage, but the king refused. Like Christopher Columbus 27 years earlier, however, Magellan found a sponsor in the monarch of Spain, and he began planning the expedition.

Ferdinand Magellan died in the Philippines in 1521, but members of his crew completed the first circumnavigation of the world in 1522. Credit: Granger Collection

On Sept. 20, 1519, Magellan left Spain with about 240 men and five ships: Concepcion, San Antonio, Santiago, Trinidad, and Victoria. The fleet sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of modern day Brazil and followed the South American coast to southern Argentina. A storm destroyed Santiago, and there were problems with the sometimes mutinous crew, but Magellan discovered a passage around the tip of South America to the Pacific—a passage known ever since as the Strait of Magellan. The crew of San Antonio mutinied and returned to Spain, but the three remaining ships sailed out of the strait and into the ocean. Magellan named the ocean the Pacific, which means peaceful, because it appeared calm compared with the stormy strait.

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This map traces Magellan’s fleet as it completed the first circumnavigation of the world from 1519 to 1522. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Sailing across the vast Pacific involved great hardship for Magellan and his crew. No Europeans had sailed across the Pacific before them. Consequently, the islands in the Pacific, where ships could resupply with food and water, were unknown. The ships sailed for 98 days without seeing any land except two uninhabited islands. Their food gave out, and their water supply became contaminated. They ate rats that infested their ships, oxhide leather, and sawdust to avoid starvation. Most of the crew suffered from scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet. Several men died before the fleet reached Guam on March 6, 1521.

Conflicts with the people of Guam and the nearby island of Rota prevented Magellan from fully resupplying his ships. But the crew seized enough food and water to continue on to the Philippines. Magellan and his crew remained in the Philippines for several weeks, and close relations developed between them and the islanders. On April 27, 1521, however, Magellan was killed when he took part in a battle between rival Filipino groups on the island of Mactan.

With only about 110 crew members remaining, Magellan’s men abandoned Concepcion, and the two remaining vessels, Trinidad and Victoria, sailed to the Spice Islands, where they were loaded with valuable spices. The leaders of the fleet then decided that the two ships should make separate return voyages.

Trinidad sailed eastward across the Pacific to the Isthmus of Panama. Bad weather and disease disrupted the voyage, and more than half the crew died. The survivors made the terrible trip across the Pacific again, only to be detained in the Spice Islands. Victoria went the other way, continuing its westward voyage across the Indian Ocean. Victoria also experienced great hardship, and many of the crew died, but the ship finally reached Spain on Sept. 6, 1522, nearly three years after the voyage had begun. Only 18 sailors lived to complete the circumnavigation.

Magellan proved that it was possible to reach the Spice Islands by sailing westward. The discovery of the Strait of Magellan led to future European voyages across the Pacific and around the world.

July 30, 2018

Portuguese, the official language of Portugal in western Europe, ranks among the most spoken languages in the world. Some 220 million people speak Portuguese as their native tongue. Interestingly, a large majority of lusófonos (Lusophones)—that is, speakers of Portuguese—live outside the language’s country of origin, which has a population of about 9.75 million. The largest number of Portuguese speakers, some 209 million of them, are found in the South American nation of Brazil.

The Portuguese flag once flew over a vast empire. The legacy of the empire lives on in the millions of Portuguese speakers around the world. Credit: © Mehmet Buma, Shutterstock

In addition to Portugal and Brazil, other countries where Portuguese has official-language status include Angola, Cabo Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Portuguese also is a co-official language of Macau, an administrative region of China. Portuguese speakers can be found in many other countries as well, including hundreds of thousands in Canada and the United States.

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Portugal. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Like French, Italian, and Spanish, Portuguese is a Romance language. Such languages developed from the Latin spoken by the ancient Romans. The Romans conquered many lands, including the Iberian Peninsula that is home to Portugal and Spain. The Romans called the Portuguese portion of Iberia Lusitania, which is why Portuguese speakers are called Lusophones. The Spanish language, a sort of older sibling to Portuguese, developed from Latin first. Portuguese then evolved from the Galician-Portuguese dialect of Spanish in the 1100’s and became a separate tongue.

The Brazilian flag flies over more than 200 million Portuguese speakers. The white band stretching across the circle bears the motto Order and Progress in Portuguese, Brazil’s official language. Credit: © Lukasz Stefanski, Shutterstock

Portuguese explorers and colonizers carried their language to other parts of the world beginning in the 1400’s. Portugal’s empire extended into Africa, Asia, and South America. In Brazil, a possession of Portugal from 1500 to 1822, Portuguese absorbed words from the languages of the indigenous people and African slaves. Today, Brazilian Portuguese has as similar relation to European Portuguese as American English has to British English. The two forms are very similar but vary in pronunciation and have some differences in grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

Like other Romance languages and English, Portuguese is written using a Roman alphabet. The Portuguese alphabet has 26 letters. Small marks called diacritics show how to pronounce certain letters and which syllables to stress.

More than a collection of 26 symbols, the Portuguese language is part of a rich musical and literary culture. Popular music forms from Lusophone countries include Brazilian samba and bossa nova, and Portuguese fado, which is characterized by melancholy lyrics and guitar accompaniment. Two styles of Portuguese music—fado and cante alentejano—are on UNESCO’s Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Cante alentejano, named after the Alentejo region of southern Portugal, is a traditional style of unaccompanied singing. Important Portuguese authors since the 1400’s include the poets Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa, as well as the novelists José Maria de Eça de Queirós and José Saramago. Saramago in 1998 won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Instituto Camões in Lisbon, Portugal, and the International Institute of the Portuguese Language in Praia, Cabo Verde, promote Portuguese language and culture.

May 15, 2018

On Saturday, May 12, Israel’s Netta Barzilai (usually simply called “Netta”) won the Eurovision Song Contest with her song “Toy.” The attention-grabbing anthem features Netta’s versatile voice clicking and chicken clucking into a boisterous dance song that carries a strong statement for female independence and against sexual exploitation and harassment—a direct result of the related Me Too movement. Netta is the first Israeli to win the hugely popular European contest since 1998, when pop singer Dana International took top prize with the song “Diva.” Greek-Albanian star Eleni Foureira, who represented Cyprus with the song “Fuego,” took second place this year just behind Netta. Cesár Sampson of Austria finished third with “Nobody but You.”

Netta raises the glass microphone trophy at the close of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon, Portugal. Credit: Wouter van Vliet, EuroVisionary (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Held every year since 1956, Eurovision is the world’s largest and longest-running annual television song competition. This year’s contest took place at Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. Each year’s winning nation hosts the following year’s contest. In 2017, Portuguese singer Salvador Sobral won Eurovision with the song “Amar Pelos Dois” (Love for Both of Us).

Long before “American Idol,” “The Voice,” “The X Factor,” or even “Star Search,” there was Eurovision. The show began as the “Eurovision Grand Prix” in 1956 and became the “Eurovision Song Contest” in 1968. Each year, primarily European countries submit one entry—one artist with one new and original song—to the Eurovision contest. Despite the great variety of nations participating, most songs are in English. The songs are each performed live—often with elaborate stage shows—and votes from the television audience are combined with those of a professional international jury to gradually narrow the competition to the “Grand Final” round. The final songs are then performed, and voting determines the overall winner, who performs again and receives the “glass microphone” trophy. This year’s competition began with 43 national entries; 26 took part in the Grand Final.

More than 50 nations have participated in Eurovision. All active members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) can take part in the contest. The EBU is a professional association of national broadcasters that negotiates and advocates on behalf of public broadcasters in Europe. The EBU also includes numerous non-European nations. It operates the Eurovision network, the world’s largest provider of international sports and news broadcasts.

Swedish group ABBA’s superstardom began with the 1974 Eurovision contest, and the show kick-started the career of French-Canadian star Céline Dion (singing for Switzerland) in 1988. Other Eurovision winners have included French singer France Gall (1965) and the British group Katrina and the Waves (1987). In 1958, Italy’s Domenico Modugno placed third at Eurovision with his song “Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu,” better known as “Volare” (made famous by American singer Dean Martin). In 1994, Eurovision first presented the Irish dance production Riverdance to international audiences. Ireland has won Eurovision seven times, more than any other country.

September 1, 2017

On remote Deserta Grande Island in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, a very rare and endangered spider is fighting for survival. A single valley on the island is home to the Deserta wolf spider (Hogna ingens), a stout and hairy burrowing spider found nowhere else on Earth. Deserta Grande is a small island among Portugal’s Madeira Islands. Deserta Grande once had a large population of these unique spiders, but habitat loss has reduced their numbers to an estimated 4,000 in the wild—a shockingly small population for an entire species of invertebrates (animals without backbones). The island, uninhabited by people, has fallen victim to an invasive grass that binds the soil so tightly that the spiders cannot burrow into it. This deprives the spiders of home and shelter, and their numbers have been greatly reduced. Help is on the way, however. At Bristol Zoo Gardens in the United Kingdom, Curator of Invertebrates Mark Bushell has begun raising his own Deserta wolf spiders, and he is part of a wider plan to replenish the spiders’ numbers on little Deserta Grande.

Mark Bushell shows off a tiny Deserta wolf spiderling at Bristol Zoo Gardens in the United Kingdom. Credit: © Bristol Zoo

In 2016, Bushell and Bristol Zoo veterinarian Richard Saunders traveled to Deserta Grande, where they collected 25 of the impressive black-and-white wolf spiders. The spiders are quite large, measuring up to 4 ¾ inches (12 centimeters) across, with a body size of 1 ½ inches (4 centimeters). Bushell and Saunders brought the spiders back to the zoo and have since successfully bred them. Tiny spiderlings, about 3/20 of an inch (4 millimeters) wide, emerged from tiny eggs, and the original 25 spiders have now multiplied to more than 1,000. The young spiders are incredibly delicate, however, and require committed and faithful care. In early 2018, Bushell will begin returning some of the spiders to their native island. Other young Deserta wolf spiders will go to other zoos to set up further safety net populations.

A conservation strategy to restore the native habitat on Deserta Grande is also in the works, a collaborative effort of the Bristol Zoo, the Instituto das Florestas e Conservação de Natureza of Madeira, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Switzerland. Working with local park rangers, the aim is to control or eradicate the invasive grass and restore the full breadth of the spider’s habitat. The Deserta wolf spider is listed as critically endangered, but it is not yet protected by any legislation.

July 11, 2016

Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo lifts the Euro 2016 trophy as his teammates celebrate their 1-0 championship win over France on July 10, 2016.
Credit: © Frank Augstein, AP Photo

Yesterday, July 10, Portugal‘s national men’s soccer team upset home favorite France 1-0 to win the 2016 UEFA European Championship at the Stade de France near Paris. UEFA stands for the Union of European Football Associations. Soccer is called football in much of the world. It was Portugal’s first European title and first major tournament win of any kind. It wasn’t Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, however, who pushed the red-clad Seleção (Selection) to victory. Ronaldo, a three-time Ballon d’Or (Golden Ball) award winner as the world’s most outstanding player, left the pitch after suffering an early knee injury. Portuguese heroics were then left to sure-handed goalkeeper Rui Patrício and—in the match’s 109^th minute—late substitute forward Éder.

In the match’s 8^th minute, Ronaldo collided with French midfielder Dimitri Payet. Ronaldo went to the turf, clutching his knee, but he remained in the game. A few minutes later, the hobbling Ronaldo went down again, receiving treatment on the sideline before returning to action. Finally, just 25 minutes into the match, the superstar forward could take no more. Grimacing and hugely disappointed, Ronaldo left the pitch on a stretcher. At the time, Ronaldo’s injury seemed to spell doom for the Portuguese. The Seleção have a poor track record in international tournaments, and it looked like the grit that advanced them through the month-long Euro 16 would not be enough to win it as well.

France dominated the first half, but several scoring opportunities turned up nothing—thanks largely to Patrício, who made several outstanding saves and repeatedly snatched the ball amidst pockets of French attackers and Portuguese defenders. After a lackluster second half, time expired with the score still 0-0—the first time a Euro championship final had remained scoreless through 90 minutes.

Extra time, too, began uneventfully and the match seemed destined to end in a penalty shootout. But then, shortly after a Portuguese miss off the crossbar, Éder, who had entered the match in the 79^th minute, snaked a goal past French keeper Hugo Lloris to put the Portuguese up 1-0—a lead they would not relinquish.

Portugal’s victory ended a run of 10 straight losses to France, who lost a major tournament on home soil for the first time since 1960. Ronaldo, who had languished and then cheered and then celebrated on the sideline, was the first to raise the Henri Delaunay Cup for Portugal in the Seleção’s finest moment to date.

Nov. 13, 2011

Mario Monti, a highly respected economist and a former European Union (EU) commissioner, has been nominated to become Italy’s prime minister and form a new government to tackle the acute national debt crisis. (National debt is the total amount that a federal government owes because of money it has borrowed by selling bonds or other securities.) Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, formally resigned on November 12 after a new austerity package (strict economic measures) were passed by both houses of parliament. The austerity package includes a mixture of tax increases and spending cuts with the aim of saving 59.8 billion euros ($89.6 billion) to balance the budget by 2014. On November 9, the yield, or rate of interest, on 10-year Italian government bonds shot above 7 percent. (A bond is a certificate issued by a government promising to pay back money it has borrowed). Higher-risk bonds must pay a higher interest rate to attract buyers. When the interest rate on the government bonds of Greece and Ireland in 2010 and Portugal in 2011 climbed to 7 percent, the three countries were forced to seek bailouts from the European Union to avoid bankruptcy (the state of being legally unable to pay debts).

The euro has replaced the individual currencies of 17 member nations of the European Union, including Italy and Greece. European Central Bank

On November 10, Greek political leaders named Lucas Papademos as prime minister. Papademos, also a respected economist, is a former vice president of the European Central Bank. The coalition (multiparty) government he will lead has pledged to save Greece from bankruptcy by quickly approving the tough terms of the second bailout package that was approved by European Union leaders on October 26.

Additional World Book articles:

• Economics
• Crisis in the Eurozone (a special report)