John Cabot

1450 – 1498

John Cabot, born Giovanni Caboto, was an Italian-born navigator and explorer who in 1497 sailed for Henry VII of England and made the earliest known European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse voyages five centuries earlier. His landfall, probably on Newfoundland, became the legal basis for the English Crown's subsequent territorial claims to the entire continent and the displacement of the Indigenous peoples those claims authorized. He died, almost certainly at sea, on a follow-up voyage of 1498.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM