Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is famous for exactly one thing – being the first person to circumnavigate the globe. His achievement has rung down the centuries, and to date Magellan has lent his name to a NASA spacecraft, two dwarf galaxies, countless cruise liners and container ships, the straits around the southernmost tip of South America and a species of penguin – the Magellanic penguin.

This lofty reputation is not entirely unearned. He set sail under the Spanish flag with a fleet of five ships in September 1519, and one of those ships, the Victoria, crawled back into port at Seville in 1522, having rounded the world in two years and 351 days.

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Historical misconceptions that many people still believe