Q 01/05

What is Vasco da Gama most famous for?

A) The first sea route from Europe to India

B) The first circumnavigation of the globe

C) Being first round the Cape of Good Hope

D) The European discovery of Brazil

Answer · why

A) The first sea route from Europe to India

The first sea route from Europe to India took da Gama round Africa in 1497-99 and let Portugal buy spices in Asia itself, cutting out the middlemen of...

Q 02/05

In which small port town in southwest Portugal was Vasco da Gama born?

A) Setúbal

B) Lagos

C) Sines

D) Sagres

Answer · why

C) Sines

Sines was governed by his father. The king later granted da Gama the town, but the knightly order that owned it refused to give it up, and he never be...

Q 03/05

Which Portuguese captain rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, a decade before da Gama sailed on to India?

A) Diogo Cão

B) Bartolomeu Dias

C) Fernão Gomes

D) Pedro Álvares Cabral

Answer · why

B) Bartolomeu Dias

Bartolomeu Dias never saw India himself: in 1500 he sailed with the follow-up fleet and was lost in a storm off the very cape he had been first to rou...

Q 04/05

Which king dispatched two spies overland via Egypt in 1487 to scout India's spice markets ahead of a sea voyage?

A) Manuel I of Portugal

B) Henry the Navigator

C) Ferdinand of Aragon

D) John II of Portugal

Answer · why

D) John II of Portugal

John II of Portugal sent Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva out posing as merchants; Covilhã reached India's spice ports years before any Portuguese ...

Q 05/05

Da Gama's 1497 fleet had two new carracks, a storeship and which kind of small, fast ship?

A) A galleon

B) A caravel

C) A galley

D) A dhow

Answer · why

B) A caravel

A caravel, the Berrio, sailed with the two carracks and the storeship. It was the first ship home in July 1499, bringing the king the news that India ...