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"We had run more than fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues, and we had completed going round the earth from East to West."

— Ferdinand Magellan

We Had Run More Than Fourteen

We had run more than fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues, and we had completed going round the earth from East to West.

— Ferdinand Magellan
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About this quote

This passage comes from Antonio Pigafetta's account of the first circumnavigation, describing the fleet's return to Spain in September 1522. Ferdinand Magellan himself did not complete the journey — he was killed in a battle in the Philippines in April 1521 — and the expedition was completed under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano. Pigafetta's figure of 14,460 leagues traveled represents the first documented calculation of the Earth's circumference by sea, confirming what had long been theorized: that the planet's oceans formed a continuous navigable sphere.

Source

Antonio Pigafetta, First Voyage Around the World

It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors, to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.
— Ferdinand Magellan
In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds this voyage of Magellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison.
— Ferdinand Magellan
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
— Ferdinand Magellan
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