Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador · Spain · Historical Figures · Lived 1475 to 1519 · aged 44
Vasco Núñez de Balboa is read about 719 times a day, in 59 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He crossed a strip of jungle in Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific from the New World - a sightline that redrew the map and the stakes of empire.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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In their orbit
About this person
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.
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