Vasco Núñez de Balboa

Balboa sailed west in 1500 and eventually landed on Hispaniola, where he spent years exploring before founding Santa María la Antigua del Darién in present-day Colombia in 1510 — the first lasting European settlement on the American mainland. Three years later, he led an expedition across the Isthmus of Panama and reached the ocean no European from the New World had seen. That 1513 crossing made his name, but it didn't save him: he was executed around January 1519, roughly six years after the discovery that secured his place in the record.