By Agence France-Presse
Ferdinand Magellan set off from Spain 500 years ago on an epoch-making voyage to sail all the way around the globe for the first time.
This is what Magellan's carrack looked like (AFP / MANILA BULLETIN)
The Portuguese explorer was killed by islanders in the Philippines two years into the adventure, leaving Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano to complete the three-year trip. But it is Magellan's name that is forever associated with the voyage.
"Magellan is still an inspiration 500 years on," said Fabien Cousteau, a French filmmaker and underwater explorer like his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
"He was a pioneer at a time when explorers who went off into the unknown had a strong habit of not coming back."
Here are five ways in which Magellan's voyage marked human history and continues to inspire scientists and explorers today.
Some of them spoke to AFP at a conference in Lisbon to mark the August 10 fifth centenary.
Historical
Magellan's voyage was a turning point in history, as unique as the first manned journey into outer space and the later moon landings, said NASA scientist Alan Stern, leader of its New Horizons interplanetary space probe.
"When the first one circled the planet, (that) sort of meant that we now had our arms around the planet for the first time," he said.
"That just transformed humanity in my view. I would call it the first planetary event, in the same way that Yuri Gagarin was the first off-planetary event" when the Soviet cosmonaut went into outer space.
Geographical
Magellan's voyage rewrote the maps and geography books. He was the first to discover the strait, which now bears his name, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the tip of South America.
"Perhaps his greatest feat, and still considered today one of the greatest feats of the history of navigation, was negotiating this strait, of which there were no maps and whose existence was vaguely rumored," said US historian Laurence Bergreen, author of a biography of Magellan.