John Cabot (Venetian: Zuan Chabotto; c. 1450 – c. 1499) was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the mainland of North America since the Norse Vikings visits to Vinland in the eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland.
Read more about John Cabot: Name and Origins, Early Life, Sponsorship, Explorations, Sebastian's Voyage, Reception and Memorialisation, Sources
Famous quotes containing the word cabot:
“That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)