3 March 1513

Juan Ponce de León sets sail for the Fountain of Youth.

De León was the governor of Puerto Rico when he heard rumors about the Fountain of Youth on an island to the north. On this date he set sail, and about the time of the Easter Feast he sighted land, and he named it Pascua Florida, or "Flowery Easter." De León didn't find the Fountain of Youth, but he did find natives, who killed him in 1521.

I wonder if de León really believed in the Fountain of Youth. We tend to think of people from earlier time periods as far more superstitious, but this seems a bit extreme, even for the early sixteenth century. He had gotten rich largely through the slave trade, so maybe he thought there was a new source of revenue in the north. I don't know much about de León, so I can't say.

"Pascua" is one of those cool cognates that have bled into English. It comes from the Latin, and we get "paschal" from it. For some reason in English it has been converted into forms of "Easter" - Krys's grandmother is named "Esther," which in Italian is "Pasqua." Language is cool.