Juan Ponce de León

Born around 1474 in Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Ponce de León came from minor nobility and sailed with Columbus's second voyage in 1493 as a gentleman volunteer. By the early 1500s he'd risen to top military command in Hispaniola, crushing a Taíno rebellion, and in 1508 he explored Puerto Rico, becoming its first governor a year later. Wealth from plantations and mines followed, but so did a bitter legal fight with Diego Colón - Columbus's son - who replaced him as governor in 1511. King Ferdinand suggested he explore further, and in 1513 Ponce de León charted Florida's coasts from the Atlantic side down to the Keys and up the Gulf. He was knighted in 1514 and authorized to settle Florida, but the death of Ferdinand in 1516 delayed his return for years. In March 1521 he led the first large-scale Spanish attempt to colonize the continental United States, landing in southwest Florida, but the Calusa fought back and he took a serious wound in the skirmish. The expedition collapsed, and he died of his injuries in Cuba that July.