My Published Articles for ViewsHound: The Discovery of the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan

Saturday, November 23, 2024

The Discovery of the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan

Today's Blog, is a little bit of history about the Philippines-The Country of My Birth.  This was taken from the book of H. Butterworth on the Story of Magellan and Discovery of the Philippines. If you are not a history enthusiast, please do not continue, but if you want to be inform a little bit of Philippine History, please go on.....The video about the Philippines is also worth your time.

" Of the five ships and 270 men that set sail from Spain in September 1519 on a mission to circumnavigate the globe, only one ship and 18 hungry and disheveled men managed to return. On September 6, 1522, one thousand eighty-two days after their departure, the Spanish captain Juan Sebastián de Elcano guided his ship, the Victoria, back to port, completing an exhausting and dangerous journey. It was, in the words of historian Laurence Bergreen, "the greatest maritime journey ever undertaken and the most significant." But the man who conceived the expedition, Ferdinand Magellan, did not live to see its conclusion. He was killed in the Philippines in 1521 at the age of 40.

In 1519, while much of Europe was entangled in religious conflicts arising from the Protestant Reformation, Spain and Portugal were the dominant powers on the continent, competing to extend their influence and authority worldwide amid the Age of Discovery. Magellan, a Portuguese nobleman (born Fernão de Magalhães), was already an experienced navigator and explorer when he offered his services to the Spanish King Charles V, proposing to establish Spanish trade routes to Asia by approaching from the east, instead of through the Indian Ocean.

Magellan's plan was to travel to "the Indies" (Indonesia and India) by first navigating around the "New World" (as the Americas were then called). This had never been done before, and most sailors of the time considered it impossible.

Magellan first crossed the Atlantic and sailed along the coast of South America. While waiting for better weather in what is now Argentina, he had to quell a mutiny. One of his ships was wrecked, and another turned back to Spain. It was an inauspicious start to the expedition.

Magellan managed to find a passage around the treacherous southern tip of South America (which became known as the "Strait of Magellan") and entered a relatively calm ocean that he called the "Pacific Ocean." He expected the crossing of what we now call the Pacific Ocean to take about four days. Instead, it took almost four months. As their food spoiled and the water supply began to dwindle, the men started to starve, and around 30 of them died of scurvy before reaching land. They made a brief stop in Guam but had to leave after the natives took a boat and other supplies from Magellan's ships, leading him to order a brutal retaliation (diplomacy was not Magellan's strong suit).

In March 1521, Magellan's expedition arrived in the Philippines. There, he recklessly involved himself in a rivalry between two chieftains, Humabon on the island of Cebu and Lapu-Lapu on the island of Mactan. Humabon and his followers readily converted to Christianity and allied with Magellan. But on April 26, a messenger from a Mactan chieftain named Zula told Magellan that Lapu-Lapu refused to obey the Spanish king. Magellan and a group of his men, with the support and encouragement of Humabon, set out for Mactan intending to subdue Lapu-Lapu. It was a fatal mistake.

Magellan was confident that with their armor, muskets, and spears, he and his men could easily defeat Lapu-Lapu and his followers, who were armed with bows, arrows, and bamboo spears. When his ship arrived at the island, he sent a demand that Lapu-Lapu and his people swear allegiance to Humabon, pay tribute, obey the Spanish king, and convert to Christianity. Lapu-Lapu and his people flatly refused and prepared for battle.

On April 27, 1521, Magellan and his group landed on Mactan and faced fierce resistance from the local warriors. Despite their technological superiority, the Spaniards were outnumbered and ambushed. During the confrontation, Magellan was wounded in the arm with a spear and then struck in the leg by an arrow. Disabled by his wounds, he was surrounded by the warriors and ultimately killed on the beach.

Magellan's death was a significant blow to the expedition, but his men did not give up. Led by Juan Sebastián de Elcano, they continued the journey and eventually completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On September 6, 1522, the Victoria returned to Spain with its crew, decimated but triumphant.

Despite its tragic end, Magellan's voyage remains one of the most important milestones in the history of maritime exploration. His expedition proved that it was possible to sail around the world and opened new trade routes that would have a lasting impact on global trade and geopolitics. Although Magellan did not live to see the success of his enterprise, his legacy endures, through Juan Sebastián de Elcano, as one of history's great navigators and explorers".

Credits: Miriam Baños

Here's a short video about the Philippines:

💚https://fb.watch/uygEIT5PCi/

The Philippines is one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world, ranking fifth for deposits of gold, nickel, copper, and chromite. This wealth of resources is largely due to the country's volcanic activity, which has resulted in rich mineral deposits. Although the Philippines has substantial copper-gold deposits, it does not hold the title for the largest copper deposit or the second-largest gold deposit globally. Regions like Zambales are particularly noted for their rich mineral resources. The mining industry plays a vital role in the country's economy, emphasizing the importance of responsible and sustainable mining practices.

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Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.

Saturday, November 23, 2024

The Discovery of the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan

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