Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães) killed in the Philippines. After circumnavigating three-quarters of the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan was killed during a tribal skirmish on the island of Mactan. The navigator was aiding a local chieftain fighting a rival group when he was wounded and abandoned by his retreating companions. His expedition had set sail from Spain in 1520 in search of a western passage to Indonesia. Magellan was the first European to reach the Pacific, having sailed through the treacherous strait south of South America that now bears his name. Seeing those strangely calm waters, he named the ocean the “Pacific”; it took his fleet 99 days to cross it westward. After his death, the expedition continued its journey, and one of the original five ships returned to Spain in September 1522, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world.
