Marco Polo dictates his Travels in a Genoese prison

1298

Captured at the naval battle of Curzola between Venice and Genoa, Polo shared a cell with the writer Rustichello of Pisa. Over months of boredom he narrated his adventures in Yuan China; Rustichello wrote them down in French-Italian. The book was instantly pirated and translated. Columbus would carry a heavily annotated copy on his voyage to the Americas two centuries later.