| A | B |
|---|
| Marco Polo | Italian explorer who excited Europe in the late 1200s by traveling the silk road. |
| Prince Henry the Navigator | He set up a school of navigation on the southwest tip of Portugal. |
| Bartholomeu Dias | He explored the southern tip of Africa but did not round the tip. |
| Vasco da Gama | He explored Africa and rounded the tip, which was later called the Cape of Good Hope. |
| Christopher Columbus | His discoveries gave Spain a foothold for building a huge empire in the Americans. |
| Pedro Alvares Cabral | Explorer from Portugal who sighted and claimed what is now Brazil. |
| Ferdinand Magellan | His ship was the first to circumnavigate the globe although he did not make it. |
| Hernan Cortes | He conquered the Aztec empire. |
| Francisco Pizarro | Followed in the footsteps of Cortes and conquered the Incas. |
| Queen Elizabeth I | She ruled England and built it into a huge empire. |
| Philip II | Catholic king of Spain, his armada lost to the English navy. |
| King Alfonso I | Christian King from the Kongo who appealed to the pope to stop the slave trade. |
| Queen Nzinga | Led an army against Portuguese slave traders in present-day Angola. |
| Jesuits | missionaries who actively worked to spread Catholicism in Asia. |
| Francis Xavier | The first Jesuit missionary to arrive in Japan. |
| Adam Smith | His argument that for capitalism to grow, governments had to stay out of business which led to free enterprise. |
