I'm not a Columbus hater. I'm just telling you the Honest Truth: This is a marketing stunt. Sailing is ancient technology. The Phoenicians were doing it 3,000 years ago. The Vikings already landed in America 500 years before him. Just nobody ever thought of pointing a boat west and refusing to turn around. Because it's pointless. (Everyone knew the ocean was too big. He literally got the size of the Earth wrong.) Portugal or Venice could also do something like this if they wanted, but they don't, because it's not worth it for them. They already have a perfectly good trade route around Africa. It's worth it for Columbus though, because his entire brand is all about having the halo of discovery. His marketing scales especially well with royal sponsors like Queen Isabella, which is why he is financially incentivised to do these voyages, while others aren't. He even negotiated 10% of everything he found and the title "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" before leaving port. He didn't even reach India. He just landed somewhere else and rebranded it as "the Indies." Again, I'm not hating, but actually educating yall. This is not engineering genius. It's marketing genius.