Henry the Navigator Dies

1460

The Portuguese prince who had never actually navigated anything himself died at Sagres, leaving behind a school of cartographers, a trickle of caravels already past Sierra Leone, and the institutional habit of state-sponsored exploration. His bones, shipped back to Batalha, are buried beside a nation he turned outward. Though he never sailed beyond Morocco, his sponsorship of cartography and navigation made him the architect of the Age of Discovery.