Bartolomeu Dias

Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese mariner who set out into the Atlantic in the late 1480s chasing a question that had consumed generations: could ships reach the Indies by sea? In February 1488, he answered it. He rounded the southern tip of Africa and discovered that the fastest route south wasn't hugging the coast but striking west into open ocean — a counter-intuitive truth that would reshape global trade. His charts and methods became the blueprint Vasco da Gama used a decade later to complete the journey to Asia. Dias himself sailed once more, joining a later fleet, and was lost at sea on…