title: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

text: Although Saudi Arabia and Bahrain already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, several countries such as Australia are examining the possibility to designate the group as well (Canada already outlawed Quds Force in 2012). On 3 October, in reaction to the death of Mahsa Amini, and the persecution of protestors in the protests that ensued, Canada officially sanctioned the IRGC. Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly announced sanctions targeting 9 entities, including the Morality Police and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and 25 individuals, that include high-ranking officials and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These individuals include IRGC Commander-in-Chief Major General Hossein Salami, and Esmail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC. On 7 October, the Canadian government expanded the sanctions, banning 10,000 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from entering the country permanently, which represents the top 50% of the organization's leadership. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added that Canada plans to expand the sanctions against those most responsible for Iran's "egregious behavior". Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland added that Iran was a "state sponsor of terror", and that "it is oppressive, theocratic and misogynist; The IRGC leadership are terrorists, the IRGC is a terrorist organization".


title: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

text: According to "Arab News", a 2020 report by the "Tony Blair Institute for Global Change" said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is an "institutionalized militia" that "uses its vast resources to spread a 'mission of jihad' through an 'ideological army' of recruits and proxies". In 2022, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the IRGC is “probably the most designated organisation – one way or another – in the world among the organisations that we designate, including the foreign terrorist organisation designation”.


title: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

text: The move was met with unfavorable reactions from Iranian leaders and militants. Shortly after the US announced the designation, the Iranian government declared the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility includes the Middle East, as a terrorist organization. According to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the move "was in response to the illegal and unwise move from the U.S." On the following day, Iranian Members of Parliament displayed their support of the IRGC by collectively wearing green military pants and chanted "death to America" as they opened session. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani also responded to the move, commenting that it was a mistake which would only increase the IRGC's popularity in Iran and elsewhere.


title: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

text: Since the designation, the United States Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program has offered a reward of up to USD $15 million for financial background information about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its branches, including an IRGC financier, Abdul Reza Shahlai, who it says was responsible for a raid that killed five American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq on 20 January 2007.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million endowment in the hopes that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 13,800 students from the US and over 100 foreign countries. Vanderbilt is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, and Dyer Observatory. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, formerly part of the university, became a separate institution in 2016. With the exception of the off-campus observatory, all of the university's facilities are situated on its campus in the heart of Nashville, from downtown.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The Fugitives and Southern Agrarians were based at the university in the first half of the 20th century and helped revive Southern literature among others. Vanderbilt is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and has been the conference's only private school since 1966.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt alumni, faculty, and staff have included 54 current and former members of the United States Congress, 18 U.S. Ambassadors, 13 governors, 11 billionaires, eight Nobel Prize laureates, two Vice Presidents of the United States, and two U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Other notable alumni include three Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 Rhodes Scholars, two Academy Award winners, one Grammy Award winner, six MacArthur Fellows, four foreign heads of state, and five Olympic medallists. Vanderbilt has more than 145,000 alumni, with 40 alumni clubs established worldwide.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the years before the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, church leaders voted to found "The Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The following year, McTyeire stayed at the New York City residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose second wife was Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (1839–1885), a cousin of McTyeire's wife, Amelia Townsend McTyeire (1827–1891); both women were from Mobile, Alabama. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, in honor of his mother. However, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country".


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The endowment was eventually increased to $1 million (roughly $ million in ) and though Vanderbilt never expressed any desire that the university be named after him, McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school in the Spring of 1873 in his honor. They acquired land formerly owned by Texas Senator John Boyd and inherited by his granddaughter and her husband, Confederate Congressman Henry S. Foote, who had built Old Central, a house still standing on campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The first building, Main Building, later known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, a Confederate veteran who also designed the Parthenon; its construction began in 1874. In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment. McTyeire named Landon Garland (1810–1895), his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. As chancellor, he shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire, including over pay rates. When the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877. Meanwhile, Old Gym, designed by Peter J. Williamson, was built in 1879–1880. By 1883, the Board of Trust passed a resolution allowing fraternities on campus, and more chapters were established in 1884.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Many of the university's early leaders had prominent ties to slavery and the Confederacy before the Civil War. Frank Vanderbilt was "a Confederate sympathizer" during the Civil War. McTyeire was born into a slave-owning family and authored an essay in favor of slavery. Garland owned "up to 60 slaves" before the Civil War.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: One of the founding trustees, Hezekiah William Foote, was a Confederate veteran and the owner of four plantations in Mississippi, including Mount Holly. The Treasurer of the Board of Trust from 1872 to 1875, Alexander Little Page Green, whose portrait hangs in Kirkland Hall, was a Methodist preacher and a former slave owner. His son-in-law, Robert A. Young, was a Methodist minister who served as the Financial Secretary on the Board of Trust from 1874 to 1882, retiring from the board in 1902. The Elliston family, who owned slaves, donated some of their Burlington Plantation, in one of the first expansions of the campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: During the first 40 years, the Board of Trust, and therefore the university, was under the control of the General Conference (the governing body) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Tension grew between the university administration and the Conference over the future of the school, particularly over the methods by which members of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust would be chosen, and the extent that non-Methodists could teach at the school.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Conflicts escalated after James H. Kirkland was appointed chancellor in 1893. Then the Southern Methodist Church congregations raised just $50,000 in a campaign to raise $300,000.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: After the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897, a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, designed by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, was moved from the grounds of the Parthenon to the Vanderbilt campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1905, Kirkland Hall burnt down, only to be rebuilt shortly after. Meanwhile, the Board of Trust voted to limit Methodist representation on the board to just five bishops. Former faculty member and bishop Elijah Hoss led a group attempting to assert Methodist control. In 1910, the board refused to seat three Methodist bishops. The Methodist Church took the issue to court and won at the local level. On March 21, 1914, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the Commodore, and not the Methodist Church, was the university's founder and that the board could therefore seat whomever it wished. The General Conference in 1914 voted 151 to 140 to sever its ties with Vanderbilt; it also voted to establish a new university, Southern Methodist University, and to greatly expand Emory University.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Colonel Edmund William Cole, the treasurer of the Board of Trust, was a Confederate veteran and a railroad executive. He is the namesake of the annual Cole Lecture; his marble bust and his wife's portrait can be seen in Kirkland Hall. His son, Whitefoord Russell Cole, who was the chairman of the Board of Trust from 1915 to 1934, defended Chancellor Kirkland's decision to split with the Methodist Church. His portrait hangs in Kirkland Hall, and he is the namesake of Cole Hall, completed in 1949.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the 1920s and 1930s, Vanderbilt University hosted two partly overlapping groups of scholars who had a large impact on American thought and letters: the Fugitives and the Agrarians. Meanwhile, Frank C. Rand, who served as the President and later Chairman of the International Shoe Company, donated US$150,000 to the university in 1925; Rand Hall was subsequently named for him.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1928, the construction of three more buildings was completed: Garland Hall, named for Chancellor Landon Garland; Buttrick Hall, named for Wallace Buttrick of the General Education Board; and Calhoun Hall, named for William Henry Calhoun, a silversmith, Odd Fellows Grand Master and slave owner.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1933, the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated $50,000 (roughly $925,166 in 2015 dollars) for the construction of Confederate Memorial Hall, designed by architect Henry C. Hibbs. It was completed in 1935.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the 1930s, Ernest William Goodpasture and his colleagues in the School of Medicine invented methods for cultivating viruses and rickettsiae in fertilized chicken eggs. This work made possible the production of vaccines against chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases caused by agents that only propagate in living cells. Alfred Blalock, Professor of Surgery, and his assistant Vivian Thomas identified a decrease in blood volume and fluid loss outside the vascular bed as a key factor in traumatic shock and pioneered the use of replacement fluids for its treatment. This treatment saved countless lives in World War II, during which Vanderbilt was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: German biophysicist Max Delbrück joined the Department of Physics in 1940, and in the following year he met Italian microbiologist Salvador Luria, who began visiting Vanderbilt. In 1942, they published on bacterial resistance to virus infection mediated by random mutation. The culminating Luria–Delbrück experiment, also called the Fluctuation Test, demonstrated that Darwin's theory of natural selection acting on random mutations applies to bacteria as well as to more complex organisms. The 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to both scientists in part for this work.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Shortly after the war, from 1945 to 1947, researchers at Vanderbilt University conducted an experiment funded by the Rockefeller Foundation where they gave 800 pregnant women radioactive iron without their consent. In a lawsuit the women received US$9.1 million from Vanderbilt University and US$900,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1998.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the early 1950s, some of the first women graduated as engineers. Women's rights advocate Maryly Van Leer Peck graduated as the first chemical engineer in 1951 after not being able to study this field at Georgia Tech where her father was president. In 1953, Chancellor Branscomb orchestrated admission of the first African American student to Vanderbilt, in the School of Divinity. In 1960, under intense pressure from the Vanderbilt Board of Trust, especially James Geddes Stahlman, a Trustee and the influential editor of the local newspaper, Branscomb expelled Divinity student James Lawson. Lawson was a Congress of Racial Equality leader who organized sit-ins in defiance of Nashville's segregation laws. A dozen faculty members resigned in protest. Branscomb later re-examined his decision, regretting he did not consider referring it to committee to delay action for three months until Lawson's graduation. The school was placed on probation for a year by the American Association of Theological Schools, and the power of trustees was curtailed. The university took Stahlman's $5 million donation in 1972–1973, and named a professorship in his honor. In 2005, Lawson was re-hired as a Distinguished University Professor for the 2006–2007 academic year. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus for his achievements.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In May 1962 the Board of Trustees approved a recommendation from Chancellor Branscomb to admit African Americans in all of the University's educational schools. The first black undergraduates entered the school in the fall of 1964. The university drew national attention in 1966 when it recruited Perry Wallace, the first African American to play varsity basketball in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Wallace, from Nashville, played varsity basketball for Vanderbilt from 1967 to 1970, and faced considerable opposition from segregationists when playing at other SEC venues. In 2004, a student-led drive to retire Wallace's jersey finally succeeded.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1964, Vanderbilt held its first IMPACT Symposium, which has since become a university tradition of hosting speakers in a multi-day annual symposium to discuss current events and topics of a controversial nature. Participants have included Martin Luther King Jr., Allen Ginsberg, Stokely Carmichael, Strom Thurmond, Robert F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine Albright, Vicente Fox, Ehud Barak, and multiple Presidents of the United States.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In March 1978, Vanderbilt hosted the South African tennis team in Memorial Gymnasium for the Davis Cup. The match was disrupted by anti-apartheid protesters who chanted "Don't play with apartheid", and a copy editor for "The Tennessean" was removed by police.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1979, Vanderbilt acquired Peabody College, then called the "George Peabody College for Teachers", residing on 53 acres adjacent to the university. Peabody College traces its history to the 1785 Davidson Academy.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the early 1980s, Vanderbilt University was an investor the Corrections Corporation of America prior to its IPO. The company was co-founded by Thomas W. Beasley, a Vanderbilt Law School alumnus who was honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1989, the university began offering Posse Foundation scholarships to groups of promising young leaders from urban backgrounds to increase their share of diverse students. By 1995, 4.23% of the undergraduate student body was African-American.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2001, the university determined to remodel the undergraduate experience by creating an academic residential college system. Since then Vanderbilt has been constructing new buildings and renovating existing structures to support the college system.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2002, the university decided to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, a residence hall on the Peabody campus to Memorial Hall. Nationwide attention resulted, in part due to a lawsuit by the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2003, but the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in May 2005 that the university must pay damages based on the present value of the United Daughters of the Confederacy's contribution if the inscription bearing the name "Confederate Memorial Hall" was removed from the building or altered. The Court of Appeals' decision has been critiqued by legal scholars. In late July 2005, the university announced that although it had officially renamed the building, and all university publications and offices will refer to it solely as "Memorial Hall", the university would neither appeal the matter further, nor remove the inscription and pay damages. In August 2016, the university agreed to remove the word "Confederate" from the building after "anonymous donors" donated $1.2 million to repay the United Daughters of the Confederacy.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2009, Vanderbilt instituted a no-loan policy. The policy states that any student granted admission and a need-based aid package will have an award that includes no student loans. Following this, in 2015, Vanderbilt implemented Opportunity Vanderbilt, which committed the university to need-blind admissions, meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need of admitted students, and including only grants in awards.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2011, the Oakland Institute exposed a university investment in EMVest Asset Management, a private equity firm "accused of 'land grabbing,' or taking over agricultural land used by local communities through exploitative practices for large-scale commercial export farming in five sub-Saharan African countries. The revelation led to student protests in 2012. By 2013, Vanderbilt administrators had divested from EMVest.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2012, Vanderbilt built Elliston Hall in honor of Elizabeth Boddie Elliston of the Burlington Plantation.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2015, Vanderbilt opened a new innovation center, the Wond'ry, as part of its Academic Strategic Plan. The three-story, 13,000-square foot building is meant to serve as an interdisciplinary hub of knowledge for the Vanderbilt community, serving as the location of hackathons, partnerships with the Nashville Entrepreneurship Center, and several social venture programs.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: As of 2021, Vanderbilt had an enrollment of 7,111 undergraduate and 6,685 graduate and professional students, for a total of 13,796 students. Students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries attend Vanderbilt, with 68% of the undergraduate student body coming from outside the South and 10% from outside of the United States. As of 2022, the incoming undergraduate class was 49% male and 51% female. Moreover, 12.7% of the class was classified as Hispanic, 11.9% Black or African American, 16.9% Asian, 6% other/two or more races, and 10.4% international. 88% of Vanderbilt's students graduate in four years and 93% within six years. 97% of first-years return for their second year.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt lets undergraduates choose among 70 majors, or create their own, in its four undergraduate schools and colleges: the College of Arts and Science, the School of Engineering, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, and Blair School of Music. The university also has six graduate and professional schools, including the Divinity School, Graduate School, Law School, School of Medicine, School of Nursing, and Owen Graduate School of Management. As of 2021, Vanderbilt has a student-to-faculty ratio of 8:1.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The university's undergraduate programs are highly selective: in 2022, Vanderbilt's acceptance rate and yield rate was 6.1% and 39.2%, respectively. Vanderbilt is the most selective university in the state of Tennessee.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Despite having one of the lowest overall undergraduate acceptance rates in the United States, Vanderbilt, among other institutions such as Northwestern University, Northeastern University and Tulane University, has come under scrutiny for "artificial deflation" of their acceptance rate, making the schools seem much more selective than they actually are.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the most recent admissions cycle, 54% of the class was accepted in the two binding Early Decision rounds, at an acceptance rate of 17.6%.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2015, Vanderbilt was ranked fifth overall and fourth among private universities in enrollment of National Merit Scholars. In its most recent annual comparison of admissions selectivity, "The Princeton Review" gave Vanderbilt a rating of 99 out of 99. The class of 2023 included 231 National Merit Scholars and 116 valedictorians or salutatorians. Additionally, the class had standardized test scores that were well above average: the interquartile range (25th percentile – 75th percentile) of SAT scores was 1460–1560, while the interquartile range of ACT scores was 33–35. For students of the class of 2016 whose schools reported exact class rankings, 93% ranked in the top 10% of their class.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: According to the National Science Foundation, Vanderbilt spent $738 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 31st in the nation. In 2013, Vanderbilt University was ranked ninth in the country in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Its Institute for Space and Defense Electronics, housed in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, includes the largest academic facility in the world involved in radiation-effects research.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Among its more unusual activities, the university has institutes devoted to the study of coffee and of bridge. Indeed, the modern form of the latter was developed by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, a former president of the university's Board of Trust and a great-grandson of the Commodore. In addition, in mid-2004 it was announced that Vanderbilt's chemical biology research may have serendipitously opened the door to the breeding of a blue rose, something that has long been coveted by horticulturalists and rose lovers.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 2010, the Center for Intelligent Mechatronics at Vanderbilt began testing a powered exoskeleton intended to assist paraplegics, stroke victims and other paralyzed or semi-paralyzed people to walk independently. The Vanderbilt exoskeleton received funding from Parker Hannifin Corporation in 2012 and has since gone to market internationally.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt is a discovering institution of Tennessine, atomic number 117 on the periodic table of elements with the symbol Ts, collaborating with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow Oblast, Russia and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was officially named after the state of Tennessee by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in 2016.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The university's research record is blemished, however, by a study university researchers, in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Health, conducted on iron metabolism during pregnancy in the 1940s. Between 1945 and 1949, over 800 pregnant women were given radioactive iron. Standards of informed consent for research subjects were not rigorously enforced at that time, and many of the women were not informed of the potential risks. The injections were later suspected to have caused cancer in at least three of the children who were born to these mothers. In 1998, the university settled a class action lawsuit with the mothers and surviving children for $10.3 million.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt is ranked the 116th best university in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 33rd in the United States by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Reuters ranked it the tenth most innovative university in the world.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In its 2022 edition, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked Vanderbilt 13th among all national universities. In the same publication's graduate program rankings, the Peabody College of Education was ranked fourth in the nation among schools of education, and the Vanderbilt Law School was listed at 18th, the School of Medicine was listed at 18th among research-oriented medical schools, the School of Nursing was listed at ninth, the School of Engineering was listed at 39th, and the Owen Graduate School of Management was listed at 23rd among business schools. Additionally, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked Vanderbilt first in the nation in the fields of special education, educational administration, and audiology. In 2014, the Owen Graduate School of Management was ranked 30th by "Bloomberg Businessweek" among full-time MBA programs.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The "Academic Ranking of World Universities" ranks Vanderbilt as the 62nd-best university in the world. Additionally the ARWU Field rankings in 2015 placed Vanderbilt as 18th best in the world for Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, and 21st in Social Sciences. In the "Times Higher Education" 2016 World University Rankings, Vanderbilt is 87th. The 2017/2018 "QS World University Rankings" ranked Vanderbilt 212th in the world. Human Resources & Labor Review, a national human competitiveness index & analysis, ranked the university as one of 50 Best World Universities in 2011. The 2007 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, a measure of the scholarly output of the faculty of nearly 7,300 doctoral programs around the United States, ranked Vanderbilt eighth among large research universities, and first in the areas of comparative literature, educational leadership, pharmacology, Portuguese, Spanish, and special education. Poets & Writers ranked Vanderbilt's English Department's MFA Program in Creative Writing 18th among the top 50 writing programs in the United States in 2010 and 14th in the United States in 2011. "Fortune" magazine ranked Vanderbilt among the top 100 places to work in the United States, the only university on their list. In 2018, "Kiplinger's" Best College Values rankings listed Vanderbilt as one of the top ten "best value" universities and one of the top five private universities for value. In 2020, "Money"'s "Best Colleges in America, Ranked by Value" rankings listed Vanderbilt as being the eighth-best value university in the nation.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt does well in non-academic rankings as well. In 2017 alone, the university was ranked first for happiest students, second for quality of life, fifth for most beautiful campus, and fifth for best-run college by "The Princeton Review". In 2016, the university was listed by "Travel + Leisure" as having one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. In 2016, Vanderbilt was ranked the third most intense college in the nation by "Business Insider". In 2018, the magazine listed Vanderbilt as the fifth smartest college in America.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The Vanderbilt campus is located approximately southwest of downtown in Midtown along both the city's bustling West End Avenue and 21st Avenue corridors. It has an area of , though this figure includes large tracts of sparsely used land in the southwest part of the main campus, as well as the Medical Center. The historical core of campus encompasses approximately .


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The oldest part of the Vanderbilt campus is known for its abundance of trees and green space, which stand in contrast to the surrounding cityscape of urban Nashville. The campus was designated as a national arboretum in 1988 by the Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, and in 2020 it was accredited as a Level II arboretum by ArbNet. Approximately 190 species of trees and shrubs can be found on campus. One tree, the Bicentennial Oak between Rand Hall and Garland Hall, is certified to have lived during the American Revolution and is the oldest living thing on the campus. In December 2015, a hackberry tree fell, leaving 10 students injured with "broken bones and stitches."


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the northeast corner of the campus (the base of the fan) is the original campus. This section stretches from West End Avenue south to the Stevenson Center and west from 21st Avenue to Alumni Lawn. The majority of the buildings of the arts and humanities departments of the College of Arts and Science, as well as the facilities of the law school, Owen Graduate School of Management, and the divinity school, are located in the original campus. Additionally, the Heard Central Library and Sarratt Student Center/Rand Hall can be found on the original campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Flanking the original campus to the south are the Stevenson Center for Science and Mathematics—built on a woodland once known as the Sacred Grove—and the School of Engineering complex (Jacobs Hall-Featheringill Hall). Housing the Science Library, the School of Engineering, and all the science and math departments of the College of Arts and Science, this complex sits between the original campus and the Medical Center. The Vanderbilt University Medical Center itself takes up the southeastern part of the campus. Besides the various associated hospitals and clinics and the facilities of the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the medical center also houses many major research facilities.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: West of the original campus and the Medical Center, Greek Row and the bulk of the Vanderbilt residence halls are found. From north to south, Carmichael Towers, Greek Row, Branscomb Quadrangle, and Highland Quadrangle house the vast majority of on-campus residents in facilities ranging from the double-occupancy, shared-bathroom dorms in Branscomb and Towers to the apartments and lodges in Highland Quadrangle. There are 20 residence halls and apartments across both campuses.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The design of the campus and buildings can be described as eclectic, with buildings of various styles and eras. The original 75-acre campus included 11 structures situated along ridge lines with sprawling views of downtown Nashville. The original campus gates are still located off 21st Avenue. Currently four of the original 11 campus structures still exist. One of these is Kirkland Hall, one of the more recognizable buildings on campus. Built in 1873, the original building had two Victorian towers. A major fire in 1905 severely damaged the building, and it was rebuilt with only one tower. The building was named after Chancellor James Hampton Kirkland, who served as Vanderbilt's chancellor from 1893 to 1937. In recent years campus planners have strived to preserve the landscape and buildings like Kirkland Hall to keep the original core and maintain a compact, walkable campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Memorial Gymnasium, Vanderbilt Stadium, Hawkins Field, McGugin Center, and all the other varsity athletic fields and facilities are to be found in the extreme west of campus. The Student Recreation Center and its associated intramural fields are located south of the varsity facilities.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Directly across 21st Avenue from the Medical Center sits the campus of the Peabody College of Education and Human Development. The design of the Peabody campus was inspired by the classical lines of Thomas Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia and the architecture of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. The National Historic Landmarks program designated the central lawn and surrounding buildings as a historic district in 1965. The Peabody campus is the location of the Martha Rivers Ingram Commons freshman residences.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt University, as a private corporation, is wholly governed by an independent, self-perpetuating Board of Trust. The board comprises 45 regular members (plus any number of trustees emeriti) and the chancellor, the university's chief executive officer. Each trustee serves a five-year term (except for four recently graduated alumni, who serve two two-year terms). Bruce R. Evans is the board's chairman.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Since the opening of the university in 1875, only eight individuals have served as chancellor. Landon Garland was the university's first chancellor, serving from 1875 to 1893. Garland organized the university and hired its first faculty. Garland Hall, an academic building on campus, is named in his honor.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The next chancellor was James Kirkland—serving from 1893 to 1937, he had the longest tenure of any Vanderbilt chancellor. He was responsible for severing the university's ties with the Methodist Church and relocating the medical school to the main campus. Vanderbilt's Main Building was renamed Kirkland Hall after Kirkland left in 1937.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The longest-tenured chancellor was followed by one of the shortest-tenured. Oliver Carmichael served Vanderbilt for just nine years, 1937 to 1946. Carmichael developed the graduate school, and established the Joint University Libraries for Vanderbilt, Peabody, and Scarritt College. Carmichael Towers, a set of high-rise dormitories on the northern edge of campus, were named for Chancellor Carmichael.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Carmichael's successor was Harvie Branscomb. Branscomb presided over a period of major growth and improvement at the university that lasted from 1946 until 1963. He was responsible for opening the admissions policy to all races. Branscomb Quadrangle is a residence hall complex named for the chancellor.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Alexander Heard, for whom the campus's 10-library system (with 3.3 million total volumes) is named, served as chancellor from 1963 to 1982. During his 20-year tenure, the Owen Graduate School of Management was founded, and Vanderbilt's merger with Peabody College was negotiated. He also survived calls for his ouster because of his accommodating stance on desegregation.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Joe B. Wyatt was the chancellor who served immediately after Heard, from 1982 until 2000. Wyatt oversaw a great increase in the university's endowment, an increase in student diversity, and the renovation of many campus buildings. Wyatt placed great emphasis on improving the quality of faculty and instruction, and during his tenure Vanderbilt rose to the top 25 in the "U.S. News & World Report"s annual rankings for the first time. The Wyatt Center on Peabody's campus is named for Wyatt and his wife.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Gee was appointed chancellor by the Board of Trust in February 2000. After allegations of lavish spending in 2005, the Board of Trust established a committee to monitor his personal spending more closely.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: After Gordon Gee's departure in 2007, Zeppos was named interim chancellor. He was named chancellor "suo jure" on March 1, 2008, by the university's Board of Trust. In April 2019, Zeppos announced his intention to resign from the chancellorship on August 1, 2019. Zeppos was succeeded by Interim Chancellor Susan R. Wente. On December 4, 2019, it was announced that Daniel Diermeier would be the next chancellor.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Until April 2016 Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) was a component of the university, but is now an independent organization. The Medical Center continues to cooperate with the university and many clinical staff serve as faculty members at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. As of April 2016, VUMC comprised the following units: Vanderbilt University Hospital, Monroe Carell Jr., Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, Vanderbilt Clinic, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital, Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt Sports Medicine, Dayani Human Performance Center, Vanderbilt Page Campbell and Heart Institute.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Before splitting with VUMC, Vanderbilt was the largest private employer in Middle Tennessee and the second largest in the state with over 23,000 employees. Approximately 74% of the university's faculty and staff were employed by the Medical Center. In 2008, the medical center was placed on the Honor Roll of "U.S. News & World Report"s annual rating of the nation's best hospitals, ranking 15th overall in the country.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The College of Arts and Science confers the Bachelor of Arts degree on undergraduates, and, in conjunction with the Graduate School, the Master of Arts, Master of Science, and the Doctor of Philosophy degrees on graduate students. The college occupies nearly 1.1 million square feet in 23 buildings across the Nashville campus.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The school is the oldest and the largest of Vanderbilt's constituent colleges. The college played host to two notable literary movements, the Fugitives and the Southern Agrarians; John Crowe Ransom was a member of the English department. Robert Penn Warren is an alumnus of the college, and the school still hosts the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The college provides a liberal-arts-based education that requires the completion of 14 courses. The general requirements of the curriculum are outlined in the AXLE (Achieving Excellence in Liberal Education) framework. These include courses in Humanities and the Creative Arts, International Cultures (along with proficiency in a foreign language), History and Culture of the United States, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Perspectives, and three writing courses.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The college provides academic resources and funding to several research centers, including the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI), the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, and the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The most popular majors are economics; medicine, health, and society; political science; neuroscience; and psychology. The college also provides advising for pre-professional tracks, such as pre-med, pre-law, and pre-nursing.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the early 2000s, Vanderbilt made a decision to convert its residence halls into an academic residential college system. The intent is to form "a cohesive and growing network of residences that spark creativity, build community, support student success, and extend educational opportunities beyond the classroom." The first phase of this conversion was opening in 2008 of The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, which brought together all first-year students in 10 adjacent houses, each house guided by a faculty head of house, living among the students in a faculty apartment. It is planned that in their sophomore year, students will enter a Residential College that will be their home for the remainder of their undergraduate years. This residential option expands on the experience provided during students' first year on The Commons. The first two upperclass colleges are Warren College and Moore College, which opened in 2014. They were constructed on the site of pre-existing dormitories known as the Kissam Quadrangle E. Bronson Ingram College, on the site of the former Vanderbilt and Barnard Halls, opened in 2018. Additional colleges are being constructed at the site of Carmichael Towers so that all upperclass students will reside in college. The new College Halls are intended to complement the earlier communities, The McGill Project, Mayfield Lodges, and McTyeire International House.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Two of the new residence halls have received LEED silver certification and the new Commons Dining Center has received gold certification, making Vanderbilt the only university in the state to be recognized by the U.S. Green Building Council. The university expects all five of the new residence halls and one renovated residence hall to eventually receive LEED recognition. The total cost of The Commons construction project is expected to be over $150 million.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Generally, undergraduate students are required to live in dorms on campus, with first-year students all living in the ten resident halls of The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons and all upperclassmen living on the main campus. Exceptions are made for students living with relatives in Davidson County, students with health exemptions, married students, and some students with senior standing.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The university has over 430 student organizations, ranging from academic major societies and honoraries to recreational sports clubs, the oldest of which is the Vanderbilt Sailing Club.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: One publication, "The Vanderbilt Hustler", was established in 1888 and is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Nashville. In "Langford v. Vanderbilt University" (1956), a student sued the university for libel; the Tennessee court dismissed the lawsuit, concluding the university was not the owner of the newspaper. Additional student publications include those published by the College of Arts & Science, such as the "Vanderbilt Political Review" and the "Vanderbilt Historical Review", as well as the Vanderbilt University Law School, which publishes three law reviews; the flagship journal is the "Vanderbilt Law Review". The on-campus radio station, WRVU, represents the student body by playing a range of music from bluegrass to choral, with a focus on non-mainstream music.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt also has a large performing arts community spanning every genre of the arts with multiple organizations representing each category. There are dance groups covering contemporary, tap, hip hop, Latin, and Bhangra styles as well as numerous theatre, improvisation, spoken word, music and singing groups including the 2014 Sing-Off champion male a cappella group, The Melodores. Performing arts organizations comprise over 1,000 students and are represented by the Vanderbilt Performing Arts Community, which supports groups by sponsoring performances and awards.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The student body is governed by Vanderbilt Student Government, which includes Senate, Judicial, and Executive Branches. This organization is responsible for the distribution of nearly $2 million in funds set aside by the university to fund student organizations. The VSG passed a bill in 2017 calling on Vanderbilt to divest from private prisons.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt's Greek system consists of 15 fraternities and 12 sororities. Of this, 7 chapters are members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. As of the 2021-22 academic year, 20% of men were members of fraternities and 26% of women were members of sororities, or 23% of total undergraduates were actively involved in the Greek system.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In 1980, several Vanderbilt students, one of whom was African-American, decided to hold Nat Turner Day to protest Kappa Alpha Order's celebration of Old South Day, when KA brothers dressed as Confederate States Army personnel. The university administrators sided with KA, banned Nat Turner Day, and let KA parade in their Confederate costumes. The African-American student was called a homophobic slur and beaten up by the KA chapter.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: On November 4, 2010, two anonymous former members of the Vanderbilt chapter, an alumnus and a senior student, alleged they were evicted from Beta Upsilon Chi, a Christian fraternity, for being gay.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2011, four Christian student organizations were placed on probation due to non-compliance with the university's nondiscrimination policy, which requires student groups to accept all students and forbids them from requiring that their officers share the "beliefs, goals and values" embodied in the group. Controversy continued to surround this issue throughout 2011 and 2012, culminating in a proposed state law exempting student organizations from nondiscrimination policies. Although the bill passed both houses of the Tennessee Legislature, it was vetoed by Governor Bill Haslam.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In March 2015, three swastikas, a symbol of Nazi antisemitism, were found spray-painted in the elevator and basement inside the house of Alpha Epsilon Pi, one of the historically Jewish fraternities on campus. The campus chapter called it "a malicious attack intended to bring to mind the horrors of the Holocaust, to force us to feel different, endangered and isolated." The news, characterized as a "hate crime" by university officials, made national and international headlines, including in Israel.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: A 2015 survey reported that 20% of undergraduate students were sexually assaulted in 2014–2015. Meanwhile, as of 2015, "The Tennessean" reports that the university is "under review by federal education officials, spurred by six current and former female students who filed a complaint about how Vanderbilt has handled cases of sexual misconduct."


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In April 2016 and June 2016, two former Vanderbilt football players were found guilty of charges related to the videotaped rape of an unconscious woman in a dorm room. Cory Batey was convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated sexual battery, facilitation of aggravated rape, and attempted aggravated rape, while Brandon Vandenburg was convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated sexual battery, and unlawful photography. The two are among four former football players charged with crimes related to the case.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt is a founding and charter member of the Southeastern Conference and for a half-century has been the conference's only private school. The university fields six men's and ten women's intercollegiate teams and has won five NCAA championships. With fewer than 6,900 undergraduates, the school is also the smallest in the conference; the SEC's next-smallest school, Mississippi State University, has nearly twice as many undergraduate students. Additionally, the school has outside conference memberships in two women's sports that the SEC does not sponsor. The women's lacrosse team plays in the American Athletic Conference. In bowling, a sport which the NCAA sanctions only for women, Vanderbilt is a member of the single-sport Southland Bowling League. Conversely, Vanderbilt is the only SEC school not to field teams in softball and volleyball, but has discussed adding either or both sports in the future.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Men's and women's tennis and baseball are traditionally Vanderbilt's strongest sports. Both basketball teams play in quirky Memorial Gym, built in 1952. The homecourt advantage Vanderbilt has enjoyed has been nicknamed "Memorial Magic".


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The Vanderbilt climbing team competes in the USA Climbing Collegiate Series. In the 2019 season, Vanderbilt took 3rd in speed climbing and 13th overall in the country.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In February 2016, the university was fined $100,000 by the Southeastern Conference after fans stormed the basketball court following a win.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: The university is unique in NCAA Division I in that for several years the athletics department was not administered separately from other aspects of campus life; Vice Chancellor David Williams, who was over intercollegiate athletics, also was university counsel and in charge of other aspects of undergraduate campus life such as intramural sports. Despite fears that Vanderbilt would lose coaches and recruits or would be forced out of the SEC, the university experienced considerable success after the change; 2006–07 was one of the best in the school's athletic history. At one point, seven of Vanderbilt's 16 teams were concurrently ranked in the Top 25 of their respective sports. Women's bowling won the NCAA championship, bringing the university its first team championship since the advent of the NCAA. The baseball team qualified for the NCAA Super Regionals in 2004, had the nation's top recruiting class in 2005 according to "Baseball America", made the NCAA field again in 2006, and won the 2007 SEC regular-season and tournament championships. Vanderbilt was ranked first in most polls for a large portion of the 2007 season, and the team secured the top seed in the 2007 NCAA tournament. In more recent years, the team has reached the pinnacle of college baseball winning the College World Series in both 2014 and 2019. The team's triumph in 2014 was the school's first national championship in a men's sport.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt's intercollegiate athletics teams are nicknamed the Commodores, in honor of the nickname given to Cornelius Vanderbilt, who made his fortune in shipping. The term "commodore" was used by the Navy during the mid-to-late 19th century. A commodore was the commanding officer of a task force of ships, and therefore higher in rank than a captain but lower in rank than an admiral. The rank is still used by the British Royal Navy and other Commonwealth countries, but the equivalent modern-day rank in the U.S. Navy is rear admiral lower half. Since the term was used most during the 19th century, Vanderbilt's mascot, "Mr. C", is usually portrayed as a naval officer from the late 19th century, complete with mutton chops, cutlass, and uniform.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In addition to Mr. C, Vanderbilt fans often use the cheer "Anchor down!" accompanied by the "VU" hand sign, created by extending the thumb along with the index and middle fingers (essentially identical to the Serbian three-finger salute).


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Alumni who have served as heads of state, prime ministers, and heads of government include José Ramón Guizado, 17th President of Panama, Thomas C. Jefferson, first Premier of the Cayman Islands, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, 15th Prime Minister of Somalia, and Chung Won-shik, 21st Prime Minister of South Korea.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Notable U.S. political figures who have attended Vanderbilt include two U.S. Vice Presidents (John Nance Garner and Nobel Laureate Al Gore), Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Attorney General James Clark McReynolds U.S. Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor, Director of the National Economic Council Allan B. Hubbard, U.S. Commissioner of Education John J. Tigert, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Wesley Snyder, U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, two White House Chiefs of Staff, John R. Steelman and Jack Watson, as well as 53 members of the United States Congress, 18 ambassadors, and 13 governors, including Governor of Texas Greg Abbott and Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Other leaders in foreign government who graduated from Vanderbilt include Baso Sangqu, President of the United Nations Security Council; Redley A. Killion, Vice President of Micronesia; Pedro Pinto Rubianes, Vice President of Ecuador; Yoo Myung-hee, Minister for Trade of South Korea, Yeda Crusius, Governor of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul; Wang Tso-jung, President of the Control Yuan of the Government of the Republic of China; Soemarno Sosroatmodjo, Governor of Jakarta, Indonesia; Kwon Hyouk-se, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea; and Ihor Petrashko, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Influential figures outside of elected office include civil rights movement pioneer James Lawson, Nobel Peace Prize-winning father of microfinance Muhammad Yunus, Scopes Trial chief counsel John Randolph Neal Jr., Chinese theologian T. C. Chao, Watergate prosecutor James F. Neal, Yun Chi-ho, Korean political activist and thinker during the Joseon Dynasty, and Charlie Soong, who played a significant role in the Xinhai Revolution.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Prominent alumni in business and finance include Time Inc. Chairman and CEO Ann S. Moore, American Airlines Group CEO Doug Parker, Hilton Hotels CEO Matthew J. Hart, NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman, J.P. Morgan & Co. CEO Henry C. Alexander, American Express Chairman Ralph Owen, founding engineer of Facebook Jeffrey J. Rothschild, General Motors President Mark Reuss, Bain and Company founder Bill Bain, Boston Consulting Group founder Bruce Henderson, Perot Systems Chairman Ross Perot Jr., Dollar General CEO Cal Turner Jr., iHeartMedia CEO Mark P. Mays, Emerson Electric CEO David Farr, Eastman Kodak President William S. Vaughn, and Sotheby's CEO Michael Ainslie. In addition, Vanderbilt has educated several heads of central banks, including Süreyya Serdengeçti (Central Bank of Turkey); Syahril Sabirin (Bank of Indonesia); Moshe Mendelbaum (Bank of Israel); Ibrahim Eris (Central Bank of Brazil); and Liang Kuo-shu (Central Bank of the Republic of China).


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In academia and the sciences, distinguished Vanderbilt alumni include University of Pennsylvania President Sheldon Hackney, founding dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Don K. Price, Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Stanford Moore, astronomers E. E. Barnard and J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Platonist philosopher Richard M. Weaver, founder of New Criticism Cleanth Brooks, mathematician Lawrence C. Evans, Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare developer Herman Daly, Haskell programming language designer Paul Hudak, Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT Mriganka Sur, founder of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and Chairman of the SpaceX Safety Advisory Panel G. Scott Hubbard, Mendel L. Peterson, "the father of underwater archaeology", John Ridley Stroop, who discovered the Stroop effect, and NASA astronauts Michael L. Gernhardt and Charles R. Chappell.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Vanderbilt graduates in medicine have pioneered and attained several "firsts" within their fields, including Norman Shumway, first to perform a successful heart transplant in the United States, Levi Watkins, first to successfully implant an automatic defibrillator in a human patient, Mildred T. Stahlman, founder of the first NICU, James Tayloe Gwathmey, the "Father of Modern Anesthesia," and Ernest William Goodpasture, who invented methods for growing viruses and rickettsiae, enabling the development of vaccination.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Alumni have made significant contributions to literature. Most notably, the Southern Agrarians and Fugitive Poets were two overlapping groups of influential American poets and writers in the early 1900s based at Vanderbilt. Three U.S. Poets Laureate are alums: Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Randall Jarrell. Warren later won the Pulitzer Prize twice for poetry and for "All the King's Men". Other important novelists include James Dickey ("Deliverance"), James Still ("River of Earth"), Elizabeth Spencer ("The Light in the Piazza"), and James Patterson, who topped "Forbes" list of global highest grossing authors in multiple years. Journalists who have attended Vanderbilt include Pulitzer Prize winners Ralph McGill and Wendell Rawls Jr., "Morning Joe" host Willie Geist, "Vogue" Director of Communications Hildy Kuryk, NBC newscaster David Brinkley, CNN International anchor Richard Quest, and head writer of "The Daily Show" Zhubin Parang.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: In popular culture, Dinah Shore, James Melton, Rosanne Cash, Amy Grant, Kim Dickens, Logan Browning, Dierks Bentley, Joe Bob Briggs, and film directors Rod Daniel and BAFTA winner Duncan Jones all attended Vanderbilt, as well as Academy Award winners Delbert Mann and Tom Schulman.


title: Vanderbilt University

text: Additionally, Vanderbilt counts among its alumni base current and former athletes in the NFL, MLB, and NBA, as well as on the PGA Tour. Alumni in the NFL include Jay Cutler, Bill Wade, Casey Hayward, Ke'Shawn Vaughn, and Trent Sherfield. Vanderbilt's entrants into the NBA include Will Perdue, Charles Davis, Festus Ezeli, Darius Garland, Dan Langhi, Clyde Lee, Luke Kornet, and Aaron Nesmith. Vanderbilt baseball stars include Sonny Gray, Walker Buehler, Pedro Alvarez, Dansby Swanson, David Price, Scotti Madison, and Mike Minor. Carter Hawkins, general manager of the Chicago Cubs, played baseball at Vanderbilt from 2004 to 2007. Brandt Snedeker was the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2007. Olympians who attended Vanderbilt include Jeff Turner, member of the gold medal-winning 1984 United States men's Olympic basketball team, gold medalist Shannon Vreeland in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay at the 2012 Summer Olympics, and rower Peter Sharis in the men's coxless pair event at the 1992 Summer Olympics.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The Age of Discovery (or the Age of Exploration), also known as the early modern period, was a period largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, approximately from the 15th century to the 17th century in European history, during which seafaring Europeans explored and colonized regions across the globe.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The extensive overseas exploration, with the Portuguese and Spanish at the forefront, later joined by the Dutch, English, and French, emerged as a powerful factor in European culture, most notably the European encounter and colonization of the Americas. It also marks an increased adoption of colonialism as a government policy in several European states. As such, it is sometimes synonymous with the first wave of European colonization.


title: Age of Discovery

text: European exploration outside the Mediterranean started with the maritime expeditions of Portugal to the Canary Islands in 1336, and later with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and Azores, the coast of West Africa in 1434 and the establishment of the sea route to India in 1498 by Vasco da Gama, which is often considered a very remarkable voyage, as it initiated the Portuguese maritime and trade presence in Kerala and the Indian Ocean.


title: Age of Discovery

text: A main event in the Age of Discovery took place when Spain sponsored the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus between 1492 and 1504, which saw the beginning of the colonization of the Americas. Years later, the Spanish expedition of Magellan–Elcano expedition made the first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522, which was regarded as a major achievement in seamanship, and had a significant impact on the European understanding of the world. These discoveries led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia that continued into the late 19th century, followed by the exploration of the polar regions in the 20th century.


title: Age of Discovery

text: European overseas exploration led to the rise of international trade and the European colonial empires, with the contact between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (the Americas), as well as Australia, producing the Columbian exchange, a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The Age of Discovery and later European exploration allowed the mapping of the world, resulting in a new worldview and distant civilizations coming into contact. At the same time, new diseases were propagated, decimating populations not previously in contact with the Old World, particularly concerning Native Americans. The era saw the widespread enslavement, exploitation and military conquest of native populations concurrent with the growing economic influence and spread of European culture and technology.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The concept of discovery has been scrutinized, critically highlighting the history of the core term of this periodization. The term "age of discovery" has been in the historical literature and still commonly used. J. H. Parry, calling the period alternatively the Age of Reconnaissance, argues that not only was the era one of European explorations to regions heretofore unknown to them but that it also produced the expansion of geographical knowledge and empirical science. "It saw also the first major victories of empirical inquiry over authority, the beginnings of that close association of science, technology, and everyday work which is an essential characteristic of the modern western world." Anthony Pagden draws on the work of Edmundo O'Gorman for the statement that "For all Europeans, the events of October 1492 constituted a 'discovery'. Something of which they had no prior knowledge had suddenly presented itself to their gaze." O'Gorman argues further that the physical and geographical encounter with new territories was less important than the Europeans’ effort to integrate this new knowledge into their worldview, what he calls "the invention of America". Pagden examines the origins of the terms "discovery" and "invention". In English, "discovery" and its forms in the romance languages derive from ""disco-operio", meaning to uncover, to reveal, to expose to the gaze” with the implicit idea that what was revealed existed previously. Few Europeans during the period of explorations used the term "invention" for the European encounters, with the notable exception of Martin Waldseemüller, whose map first used the term "America".


title: Age of Discovery

text: A central legal concept of the Discovery Doctrine, expounded by the United States Supreme Court in 1823, draws on assertions of European powers' right to claim land during their explorations. The concept of "discovery" been used to enforce colonial claiming and the age of discovery, but has been also vocally challenged by indigenous peoples and researchers. Many indigenous peoples have fundamentally challenged the concept and colonial claiming of "discovery" over their lands and people as forced and negating indigenous presence.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The period alternatively called the "Age of Exploration", has also been scrutinized through reflections on the understanding and use of exploration. Its understanding and use, like science more generally, has been discussed as being framed and used for colonial ventures, discrimination and exploitation, by combining it with concepts such as the "frontier" (as in frontierism) and manifest destiny, up to the contemporary age of space exploration.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Alternatively, the term and concept of contact, as in first contact, has been used to shed a more nuanced and reciprocal light on the age of discovery and colonialism, using the alternative names of Age of Contact or Contact Period, discussing it as an "unfinished, diverse project".


title: Age of Discovery

text: The Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa in 1418, under the sponsorship of Infante Dom Henrique (Prince Henry). In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean by this route.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon funded Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus's () plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. Columbus encountered a continent uncharted by most Europeans (though it had begun to be explored and was temporarily colonized by the Norse starting some 500 years earlier). Later, it was called America after Amerigo Vespucci, a trader working for Portugal. Portugal quickly claimed those lands under the terms of the Treaty of Alcáçovas but Castile was able to persuade the Pope, who was himself a Castilian, to issue four papal bulls to divide the world into two regions of exploration, where each kingdom had exclusive rights to claim newly discovered lands. These were modified by the Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by Pope Julius II.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. While other exploratory fleets were sent from Portugal to northern North America, in the following years Portuguese India Armadas also extended this Eastern oceanic route, touching sometimes South America and by this way opening a circuit from the New World to Asia (starting in 1500, under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral), and explored islands in the South Atlantic and Southern Indian Oceans. Soon, the Portuguese sailed further eastward, to the valuable Spice Islands in 1512, landing in China one year later. Japan was reached by the Portuguese only in 1543. In 1513, Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached the "other sea" from the New World. Thus, Europe first received news of the eastern and western Pacific within a one-year span around 1512. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and, after his death in the Maluku islands, by Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, sailing westward, completed the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish "conquistadors" explored the interior of the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands. The main objective of this voyage was to disrupt Portuguese trade in the East.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Since 1495, the French, the English, and the Dutch entered the race of exploration after learning of these exploits, defying the Iberian monopoly on maritime trade by searching for new routes, first to the western coasts of North and South America, through the first English and French expeditions (starting with the first expedition of John Cabot in 1497 to the north, in the service of England, followed by the French expeditions to South America and later to North America), and into the Pacific Ocean around South America, but eventually by following the Portuguese around Africa into the Indian Ocean; discovering Australia in 1606, New Zealand in 1642, and Hawaii in 1778. Meanwhile, from the 1580s to the 1640s, Russians explored and conquered almost the whole of Siberia and Alaska in the 1730s.


title: Age of Discovery

text: After the fall of Rome largely severed the connection between Europe and lands further east, Christian Europe was largely a backwater compared to the Arab world, which quickly conquered and incorporated large territories in the Middle East and North Africa. The Christian crusades to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims was not a military success, but it did bring Europe into contact with the Middle East and the valuable goods manufactured or traded there. From the 12th century, the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes, leading Europe to create trading networks.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Before the 12th century, a major obstacle to trade east of the Strait of Gibraltar, which divided the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, was Muslim control of great swaths of territory, including the Iberian peninsula and the trade monopolies of Christian city-states on the Italian peninsula, especially Venice and Genoa. Economic growth of Iberia followed the Christian reconquest of Al-Andalus in what is now southern Spain and the Siege of Lisbon (1147 AD), in Portugal. The decline of Fatimid Caliphate naval strength that started before the First Crusade helped the maritime Italian states, mainly Venice, Genoa and Pisa, dominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean, with merchants there becoming wealthy and politically influential. Further changing the mercantile situation in the Eastern Mediterranean was the waning of Christian Byzantine naval power following the death of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, whose dynasty had made several notable treaties and concessions with Italian traders, permitting the use of Byzantine Christian ports. The Norman Conquest of England in the late 11th century allowed for peaceful trade on the North Sea. The Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchant guilds and their towns in northern Germany along the North Sea and Baltic Sea, was instrumental in commercial development of the region. In the 12th century, the region of Flanders, Hainault and Brabant produced the finest quality textiles in northern Europe, which encouraged merchants from Genoa and Venice to sail there directly from the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast. Nicolòzzo Spinola made the first recorded direct voyage from Genoa to Flanders in 1277.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Technological advancements that were important to the Age of Exploration were the adoption of the magnetic compass and advances in ship design.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The compass was an addition to the ancient method of navigation based on sightings of the sun and stars. The compass had been used for navigation in China by the 11th century and was adopted by the Arab traders in the Indian Ocean. The compass spread to Europe by the late 12th or early 13th century. Use of the compass for navigation in the Indian Ocean was first mentioned in 1232. The first mention of use of the compass in Europe was in 1180. The Europeans used a "dry" compass, with a needle on a pivot. The compass card was also a European invention.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The Javanese built ocean going merchant ships called "po" since at least the 1st century AD. It was over 50 m in length and had a freeboard of 5.2–7.8 m. The "po" was capable of carrying 700 people together with more than 10,000 "hú" (斛) of cargo (250–1000 tons according to various interpretations). They are built with multiple planks to resist storms, and had 4 sails plus a bowsprit sail.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Ships grew in size, required smaller crews and were able to sail longer distances without stopping. This led to significant lower long-distance shipping costs by the 14th century. Cogs remained popular for trade because of their low cost. Galleys were also used in trade.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", a document dating from 40 to 60 AD, describes a newly discovered route through the Red Sea to India, with descriptions of the markets in towns around Red Sea, Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, including along the eastern coast of Africa, which states "for beyond these places the unexplored ocean curves around toward the west, and running along by the regions to the south of Aethiopia and Libya and Africa, it mingles with the western sea (possible reference to the Atlantic Ocean)". European medieval knowledge about Asia beyond the reach of the Byzantine Empire was sourced in partial reports, often obscured by legends, dating back from the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Another source was the Radhanite Jewish trade networks of merchants established as go-betweens between Europe and the Muslim world during the time of the Crusader states.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1154, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created a description of the world and a world map, the Tabula Rogeriana, at the court of King Roger II of Sicily, but still Africa was only partially known to either Christians, Genoese and Venetians, or the Arab seamen, and its southern extent unknown. There were reports of great African Sahara, but the factual knowledge was limited for the Europeans to the Mediterranean coasts and little else since the Arab blockade of North Africa precluded exploration inland. Knowledge about the Atlantic African coast was fragmented and derived mainly from old Greek and Roman maps based on Carthaginian knowledge, including the time of Roman exploration of Mauritania. The Red Sea was barely known and only trade links with the Maritime republics, the Republic of Venice especially, fostered collection of accurate maritime knowledge.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Indian Ocean trade routes were sailed by Arab traders. Between 1405 and 1421, the Yongle Emperor of Ming China sponsored a series of long range tributary missions under the command of Zheng He (Cheng Ho). The fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Maritime Southeast Asia and Thailand. But the journeys, reported by Ma Huan, a Muslim voyager and translator, were halted abruptly after the emperor's death and were not followed up, as the Chinese Ming Dynasty retreated in the "haijin", a policy of isolationism, having limited maritime trade.


title: Age of Discovery

text: By 1400, a Latin translation of Ptolemy's "Geographia" reached Italy coming from Constantinople. The rediscovery of Roman geographical knowledge was a revelation, both for map-making and worldview, although reinforcing the idea that the Indian Ocean was landlocked.


title: Age of Discovery

text: A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. The Mongols had threatened Europe, but Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the "Pax Mongolica" allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. Most were Italians, as trade between Europe and the Middle East was controlled mainly by the Maritime republics. The close Italian links to the Levant raised great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east.


title: Age of Discovery

text: There are a few accounts of merchants from North Africa and the Mediterranean region who traded in the Indian Ocean in late medieval times.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum during the Mongol invasions of the Levant, from which they gained a greater understanding of the world. The first of these travellers was Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, dispatched by Pope Innocent IV to the Great Khan, who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241 to 1247. About the same time, Russian prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, and subsequently his sons Alexander Nevsky and Andrey II of Vladimir, travelled to the Mongolian capital. Though having strong political implications, their journeys left no detailed accounts. Other travellers followed, like French André de Longjumeau and Flemish William of Rubruck, who reached China through Central Asia. Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295, describing being a guest at the Yuan Dynasty court of Kublai Khan in "Travels", and it was read throughout Europe.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The Muslim fleet guarding the Strait of Gibraltar was defeated by Genoa in 1291. In that year, the Genoese attempted their first Atlantic exploration attempt when merchant brothers Vadino and Ugolino Vivaldi sailed from Genoa with two galleys but disappeared off the Moroccan coast, feeding the fears of oceanic travel. From 1325 to 1354, a Moroccan scholar from Tangier, Ibn Battuta, journeyed through North Africa, the Sahara desert, West Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, having reached China. After returning, he dictated an account of his journeys to a scholar he met in Granada, "The Rihla" ("The Journey"), the unheralded source on his adventures. Between 1357 and 1371 a book of supposed travels compiled by John Mandeville acquired extraordinary popularity. Despite the unreliable and often fantastical nature of its accounts it was used as a reference for the East, Egypt, and the Levant in general, asserting the old belief that Jerusalem was the centre of the world.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Following the period of Timurid relations with Europe, in 1439 Niccolò de' Conti published an account of his travels as a Muslim merchant to India and Southeast Asia and, later in 1466–1472, Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver travelled to India, which he described in his book "A Journey Beyond the Three Seas".


title: Age of Discovery

text: These overland journeys had little immediate effect. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became more difficult and dangerous. The Black Death of the 14th century also blocked travel and trade. The rise of the Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The Chinese had wide connections through trade in Asia and had been sailing to Arabia, East Africa, and Egypt since the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907). Between 1405 and 1421, the third Ming emperor Yongle sponsored a series of long range tributary missions in the Indian Ocean under the command of admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho). As important as they are, these voyages did not result in permanent links to overseas territories because of isolationist policy changes in China ending the voyages and knowledge of them.


title: Age of Discovery

text: A large fleet of new junk ships was prepared for these international diplomatic expeditions. The largest of these junks—that the Chinese termed "bao chuan" (treasure ships)—may have measured 121 metres (400 feet) stem to stern, and thousands of sailors were involved. The first expedition departed in 1405. At least seven well-documented expeditions were launched, each bigger and more expensive than the last. The fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Malay Archipelago and Thailand (at the time called Siam), exchanging goods along the way. They presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk; in return, received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes. After the emperor's death, Zheng He led a final expedition departing from Nanking in 1431 and returning to Beijing in 1433. It is very likely that this last expedition reached as far as Madagascar. The travels were reported by Ma Huan, a Muslim voyager and translator who accompanied Zheng He on three of the seven expeditions, his account published as the "Yingya Shenglan" (Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores) (1433).


title: Age of Discovery

text: The voyages had a significant and lasting effect on the organization of a maritime network, utilizing and creating nodes and conduits in its wake, thereby restructuring international and cross-cultural relationships and exchanges. It was especially impactful as no other polity had exerted naval dominance over all sectors of the Indian Ocean prior to these voyages. The Ming promoted alternative nodes as a strategy to establish control over the network. For instance, due to Chinese involvement, ports such as Malacca (in Southeast Asia), Cochin (on the Malabar Coast), and Malindi (on the Swahili Coast) had grown as key alternatives to other important and established ports. The appearance of the Ming treasure fleet generated and intensified competition among contending polities and rivals, each seeking an alliance with the Ming.


title: Age of Discovery

text: The voyages also brought about the Western Ocean's regional integration and the increase in international circulation of people, ideas, and goods. It also provided a platform for cosmopolitan discourses, which took place in locations such as the ships of the Ming treasure fleet, the Ming capitals of Nanjing as well as Beijing, and the banquet receptions organized by the Ming court for foreign representatives. Diverse groups of people from across the maritime countries congregated, interacted, and traveled together as the Ming treasure fleet sailed from and to Ming China. For the first time in its history, the maritime region from China to Africa was under the dominance of a single imperial power and thereby allowed for the creation of a cosmopolitan space.


title: Age of Discovery

text: These long-distance journeys were not followed up, as the Chinese Ming dynasty retreated in the "haijin", a policy of isolationism, having limited maritime trade. Travels were halted abruptly after the emperor's death, as the Chinese lost interest in what they termed barbarian lands, turning inward, and successor emperors felt the expeditions were harmful to the Chinese state; Hongxi Emperor ended further expeditions and Xuande Emperor suppressed much of the information about Zheng He's voyages.


title: Age of Discovery

text: From the 8th century until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice and neighboring maritime republics held the monopoly of European trade with the Middle East. The silk and spice trade, involving spices, incense, herbs, drugs and opium, made these Mediterranean city-states phenomenally rich. Spices were among the most expensive and demanded products of the Middle Ages, as they were used in medieval medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics, perfumery, as well as food additives and preservatives. They were all imported from Asia and Africa.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Muslim traders—mainly descendants of Arab sailors from Yemen and Oman—dominated maritime routes throughout the Indian Ocean, tapping source regions in the Far East and shipping for trading emporiums in India, mainly Kozhikode, westward to Ormus in the Persian Gulf and Jeddah in the Red Sea. From there, overland routes led to the Mediterranean coasts. Venetian merchants distributed the goods through Europe until the rise of the Ottoman Empire, that eventually led to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, barring Europeans from important combined-land-sea routes in areas around the Aegean, Bosporus, and Black Sea. The Venetians and other Italian Maritime Republics maintained some, more limited, access to Asian goods, via south-eastern Mediterranean trade, in such ports as Antioch, Acre, and Alexandria.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, and at war with Venice, the Genoese had turned to North African trade of wheat, olive oil (valued also as an energy source) and a search for silver and gold. Europeans had a constant deficit in silver and gold, as coin only went one way: out, spent on eastern trade that was now cut off. Several European mines were exhausted, the lack of bullion leading to the development of a complex banking system to manage the risks in trade (the very first state bank, "Banco di San Giorgio", was founded in 1407 at Genoa). Sailing also into the ports of Bruges (Flanders) and England, Genoese communities were then established in Portugal, who profited from their enterprise and financial expertise.


title: Age of Discovery

text: European sailing had been primarily close to land cabotage, guided by portolan charts. These charts specified proven ocean routes guided by coastal landmarks: sailors departed from a known point, followed a compass heading, and tried to identify their location by its landmarks. For the first oceanic exploration Western Europeans used the compass, as well as progressive new advances in cartography and astronomy. Arab navigational tools like the astrolabe and quadrant were used for celestial navigation.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1297, King Dinis of Portugal took personal interest in exports. In 1317, he made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pessagno), appointing him first admiral of the Portuguese Navy, with the goal of defending the country against Muslim pirate raids. Outbreaks of bubonic plague led to severe depopulation in the second half of the 14th century: only the sea offered alternatives, with most population settling in fishing and trading coastal areas. Between 1325 and 1357, Afonso IV of Portugal encouraged maritime commerce and ordered the first explorations. The Canary Islands, already known to the Genoese, were claimed as officially discovered under patronage of the Portuguese but in 1344 Castile disputed them, expanding their rivalry into the sea.


title: Age of Discovery

text: To ensure their monopoly on trade, Europeans (beginning with the Portuguese) attempted to install a mediterranean system of trade which used military might and intimidation to divert trade through ports they controlled; there it could be taxed. In 1415, Ceuta was conquered by the Portuguese aiming to control navigation of the African coast. Young prince Henry the Navigator was there and became aware of profit possibilities in the Trans-Saharan trade routes. For centuries slave and gold trade routes linking West Africa with the Mediterranean passed over the Western Sahara Desert, controlled by the Moors of North Africa.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Henry wished to know how far Muslim territories in Africa extended, hoping to bypass them and trade directly with West Africa by sea, find allies in legendary Christian lands to the south like the long-lost Christian kingdom of Prester John and to probe whether it was possible to reach the Indies by sea, the source of the lucrative spice trade. He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania, gathering a group of merchants, shipowners and stakeholders interested in new sea lanes. Soon the Atlantic islands of Madeira (1419) and the Azores (1427) were reached. In particular, they were discovered by voyages launched by the command of Prince Henry the Navigator. The expedition leader himself, who established settlements on the island of Madeira, was Portuguese explorer João Gonçalves Zarco.


title: Age of Discovery

text: At the time, Europeans did not know what lay beyond Cape Non (Cape Chaunar) on the African coast, and whether it was possible to return once it was crossed. Nautical myths warned of oceanic monsters or an edge of the world, but Prince Henry's navigation challenged such beliefs: starting in 1421, systematic sailing overcame it, reaching the difficult Cape Bojador that in 1434 one of Prince Henry's captains, Gil Eanes, finally passed.


title: Age of Discovery

text: From 1440 onwards, caravels were extensively used for the exploration of the coast of Africa. This was an existing Iberian ship type, used for fishing, commerce and some military purposes. Unlike some other vessels of the time, the caravel had a sternpost mounted rudder (as opposed to a side-mounted steering oar, as was seen, for instance, on the Mediterranean ). It had a shallow draft, which was helpful in exploring unknown coastlines. It had good sailing performance, with a windward ability that was particularly notable by the standards of the time. The lateen rig was less useful when sailing downwind – which explains Christopher Columbus () re-rigging the with square rig.


title: Age of Discovery

text: For celestial navigation the Portuguese used the ephemerides, which experienced a remarkable diffusion in the 15th century. These were astronomical charts plotting the location of the stars over a distinct period of time. Published in 1496 by the Jewish astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician Abraham Zacuto, the Almanach Perpetuum included some of these tables for the movements of stars. These tables revolutionized navigation, allowing the calculation of latitude. Exact longitude, however, remained elusive, and mariners struggled to determine it for centuries. Using the caravel, systematic exploration continued ever more southerly, advancing on average one degree a year. Senegal and Cape Verde Peninsula were reached in 1445 and in 1446, Álvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as present-day Sierra Leone.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1453, the Fall of Constantinople to the hands of the Ottomans was a blow to Christendom and the established business relations linking with the east. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued the bull "Romanus Pontifex" reinforcing the previous "Dum Diversas" (1452), granting all lands and seas discovered beyond Cape Bojador to King Afonso V of Portugal and his successors, as well as trade and conquest against Muslims and pagans, initiating a "mare clausum" policy in the Atlantic. The king, who had been inquiring of Genoese experts about a seaway to India, commissioned the Fra Mauro world map, which arrived in Lisbon in 1459.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1456, Diogo Gomes reached the Cape Verde archipelago. In the next decade several captains at the service of Prince Henry—including the Genoese Antonio da Noli and Venetian Alvise Cadamosto—discovered the remaining islands which were occupied during the 15th century. The Gulf of Guinea would be reached in the 1460s.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1460, Pedro de Sintra reached Sierra Leone. Prince Henry died in November that year after which, given the meagre revenues, exploration was granted to Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes in 1469, who in exchange for the monopoly of trade in the Gulf of Guinea had to explore each year for five years. With his sponsorship, explorers João de Santarém, Pedro Escobar, Lopo Gonçalves, Fernão do Pó, and Pedro de Sintra made it even beyond those goals. They reached the Southern Hemisphere and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé and Príncipe and Elmina on the Gold Coast in 1471. (In the Southern Hemisphere, they used the Southern Cross as the reference for celestial navigation.) There, in what came to be called the "Gold Coast" in what is today Ghana, a thriving alluvial gold trade was found among the natives and Arab and Berber traders.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1478, during the War of the Castilian Succession, near the coast at Elmina was fought a large battle between a Castilian armada of 35 caravels and a Portuguese fleet for hegemony of the Guinea trade (gold, slaves, ivory, and melegueta pepper). The war ended with a Portuguese naval victory followed by the official recognition by the Catholic Monarchs of Portuguese sovereignty over most of the disputed West African territories embodied in the Treaty of Alcáçovas, 1479. This was the first colonial war among European powers.


title: Age of Discovery

text: In 1481, the recently crowned João II decided to build São Jorge da Mina factory. In 1482 the Congo River was explored by Diogo Cão, who in 1486 continued to Cape Cross (modern Namibia).


title: Age of Discovery

text: The next crucial breakthrough was in 1488, when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa, which he named "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas), anchoring at Mossel Bay and then sailing east as far as the mouth of the Great Fish River, proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible from the Atlantic. Simultaneously Pêro da Covilhã, sent out travelling secretly overland, had reached Ethiopia having collected important information about the Red Sea and Quenia coast, suggesting that a sea route to the Indies would soon be forthcoming. Soon the cape was renamed by King John II of Portugal the "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança), because of the great optimism engendered by the possibility of a sea route to India, proving false the view that had existed since Ptolemy that the Indian Ocean was land-locked.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Based on much later stories of the phantom island known as Bacalao and the carvings on Dighton Rock some have speculated that Portuguese explorer João Vaz Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland in 1473, but the sources cited are considered by mainstream historians to be unreliable and unconvincing.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Portugal's Iberian rival, Castile, had begun to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the west African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal Iberian politics and the repelling of Islamic invasion attempts and raids through most of the 15th century. Only late in the century, following the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon did an emerging modern Spain become fully committed to the search for new trade routes overseas. The Crown of Aragon had been an important maritime potentate in the Mediterranean, controlling territories in eastern Spain, southwestern France, major islands like Sicily, Malta, and the Kingdom of Naples and Sardinia, with mainland possessions as far as Greece. In 1492 the joint rulers conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute, and decided to fund Christopher Columbus's expedition in the hope of bypassing Portugal's monopoly on west African sea routes, to reach "the Indies" (east and south Asia) by travelling west. Twice before, in 1485 and 1488, Columbus had presented the project to king John II of Portugal, who rejected it.


title: Age of Discovery

text: On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships; one larger carrack, "Santa María", nicknamed "Gallega" ("the Galician"), and two smaller caravels, "Pinta" ("the Painted") and "Santa Clara", nicknamed "Niña". Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, where he restocked for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean, crossing a section of the Atlantic that became known as the Sargasso Sea.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Land was sighted on 12 October 1492, and Columbus called the island (one of the islands now comprising The Bahamas – but which one is disputed) "San Salvador", in what he thought to be the "East Indies". Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba (landed on 28 October) and the northern coast of Hispaniola, by 5 December. He was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind.


title: Age of Discovery

text: On the return, a storm forced him to dock in Lisbon, on 4 March 1493. After a week in Portugal, he set sail for Spain and on 15 March 1493 arrived in Barcelona, where he reported to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Word of his discovery of new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries—unlike Africa or Asia, the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Castilian ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought.


title: Age of Discovery

text: Shortly after Columbus's return from what would later be called the "West Indies", a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese. On 4 May 1493, two months after Columbus's arrival, the Catholic Monarchs received a bull ("Inter caetera") from Pope Alexander VI stating that all lands west and south of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Castile and, later, all mainlands and islands then belonging to India. It did not mention Portugal, which could not claim newly discovered lands east of the line.


title: Age of Discovery

text: King John II of Portugal was not pleased with the arrangement, feeling that it gave him far too little land—preventing him from reaching India, his main goal. He then negotiated directly with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to move the line west, and allowing him to claim newly discovered lands east of it.


title: Age of Discovery

text: An agreement was reached in 1494, with the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between the two powers. In this treaty the Portuguese received everything outside Europe east of a line that ran 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (already Portuguese), and the islands discovered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Castile), named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antilia (Cuba and Hispaniola). This gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish (Castile) received everything west of this line. At the time of negotiation, the treaty split the known world of Atlantic islands roughly in half, with the dividing line about halfway between Portuguese Cape Verde and the Spanish discoveries in the Caribbean.