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What does the Cape of Good Hope connect?
The Cape of Good Hope route joins Eastern Asia and Europe to southern parts of Africa. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 provided a much shorter route from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, making the long trip around Africa inefficient.
How long is the Cape route?
The total distance for ships taking the Cape route from Rotterdam to Singapore is about 11,720 nautical miles, compared to 8,440 nautical miles via the Suez Canal.
What formation is the Cape of Good Hope?
The Cape of Good Hope is part of the Table Mountain range. The Table Mountains are mostly made of sandstone, a soft rock. The ocean eroded the Table Mountain sandstone on the coast, leaving only the hard, rocky cape. Cape Cod in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, was formed by glaciers.
What does it mean to round the Cape of Good Hope?
This was once thought to be where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet on the southern tip of Africa. There is a Portuguese saying that translates to “he’s rounding the Cape of Good Hope,” which means that a man’s life is in its final phase and that he’s incapable of accomplishing anything more.
Who sailed around Africa and reached India?
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer who followed in the footsteps of Dias and became the first European to sail around the southern tip of Africa and all the way to India. Da Gama sailed from Lisbon, Portugal in July 1497, with four ships.
Who reached Cape of Good Hope?
navigator Bartolomeu Dias
Cape of Good Hope, rocky promontory at the southern end of Cape Peninsula, Western Cape province, South Africa. The first European to sight the cape was Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 on his return voyage to Portugal after ascertaining the southern limits of the African continent.
Why is the southernmost tip of Africa called Cape of Good Hope?
The Cape was originally named the Cape of Storms in the 1480s by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias. It was later renamed to Good Hope to attract more people to the Cape Sea Route that passed the southern coast of Africa.
What discovered Vasco da Gama?
He is often credited for discovering the sea route from western Europe to the East by way of the Cape of Good Hope. On May 20, 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama stepped foot in India. After two years he set sail from Lisbon, da Gama arrived on the Western sea coast of India at Kozhikode (Calicut), Kerala.