It has been over 500 years the first journey around the earth in 1521. Long before the invention of trains and planes, many thought it was impossible. It nearly was. The journey (start) by a Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, but he never saw it finished.
Magellan was following in the footsteps of explorers like Christopher Columbus. He'd traveled from Spain to America in 1492 and encouraged others (take) to the seas. But Magellan's journey was even more daring. It was a journey around the whole world that would (complete) show the still questioned idea that the world was not flat, but round.
In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain, he got support from the Spanish King, Charles V. But Spanish sailors didn't feel like (lead) by a Portuguese man.
After fighting storms, losing ships and many of his men turning against him and returning home, Magellan was killed in the Philippines by local people.
After Magellan's (die), his group continued in the only ship that was left Along the way, they traveled across a new ocean and (map) new paths for European trade For better or (bad), they had made the way for modern world trade and proved that the earth was round.
The passage Magellan's team went through, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was named after him: the Strait of Magellan, which is 570 kilometers long. His influence on the world did not end there In 1989, NASA named spacecraft after the explorer and sent it to Venus(金星).