1521: Magellan killed in the Philippines

After traveling three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island. Magellan was helping a local chief conquer a rival tribe when he was injured and left behind by his retreating comrades. In 1520, his expedition had set out from Spain to find a western passage to Indonesia. After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, he became the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic. Encountering waters so strangely calm that Magellan named the ocean Pacific, his fleet spent 99 days making their westward crossing. After his death in the Philippines, his ships continued the journey and one of the five original ships returned to Spain in September 1522, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world.
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1521Portuguese navigator and explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippine Islands.