On April 27, 1521, on the small Philippine island of Mactan, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed during a clash with local warriors led by Chief Lapulapu. He had sailed halfway around the world to get there, and he never finished the trip. But the expedition he started kept going - and 18 months later, one of his ships became the first vessel ever to sail completely around the planet.
Magellan had set out from Spain in August 1519 with five ships and about 270 men. His mission was to find a westward route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, where cloves and nutmeg were worth more than gold. He pushed south along the coast of South America, surviving freezing storms and mutinies. He finally discovered a narrow, twisty passage at the bottom of the continent - now called the Strait of Magellan - and pushed through into a vast ocean he named the Pacific, meaning peaceful.
After Magellan's death, his Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano took command. Only one battered ship, the Victoria, and 18 starving men made it back to Spain in September 1522, completing the very first circumnavigation of the Earth. They returned with 26 tons of spices, which sold for enough to make the voyage a financial success. The trip proved once and for all that the world was round and that all its oceans were connected - a fact maps would now show forever.
