Search Results: History of the faroe islands

Clove, nutmeg, and mace are native to only a handful of tiny islands in the middle of the vast Indonesian archipelago – cloves on five Maluku Islands (the Moluccas) about 1250 km (778 mi) west of New Guinea, and nutmeg on the ten Banda Islands...

The Portuguese colonization of the Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) Islands began from 1462. Initially envisaged as a base to give mariners direct access to West African trade, the Central Atlantic islands soon became a major hub of the Atlantic slave...

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was formed in 1602 by the Staten-Generaal (States General) of the then Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The company was granted a 21-year charter with rights to trade exclusively in Asia and to...

Polynesian navigation of the Pacific Ocean and its settlement began thousands of years ago. The inhabitants of the Pacific islands had been voyaging across vast expanses of ocean water sailing in double canoes or outriggers using nothing...

Food and drink in the Elizabethan era was remarkably diverse with much more meat and many more varieties of it being eaten by those who could afford it than is the case today. Storage of food was still a problem and so fresh produce was grown...

It is a well-known fact that Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean sea, went through a quite complex prehistoric period. So much so that it is difficult to navigate through the muddle of people that have followed each other over...

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is today the Philippines...

A 1590 illustration showing a Spanish Manila galleon in the Ladrones Islands (Mariana Islands) in the Pacific Ocean. (From the Boxer Codex)

A map of the Juan Fernández Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The islands famously hosted the marooned mariner Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) from 1704 to 1709. Selkirk inspired the title character of Daniel Defoe's celebrated novel...

An iron helmet from the Battle of the Aegates Islands. 241 BCE. Soprintendenza del Mare, (National Maritime Museum, Sydney Australia)