Although myths and speculation about a Terra Australis (" Southern Land ") date back to antiquity, the first confirmed sighting of the continent of Antarctica is commonly accepted to have occurred in 1820 by the Russian expedition of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on Vostok and Mirny.

The first European sighting of the Virgin Islands was by Christopher Columbus in 1493 on his second voyage to the Americas.

After three months of intense work, he predicted a position for Ceres in December 1801 — just about a year after its first sighting — and this turned out to be accurate within a half-degree when it was rediscovered by Franz Xaver von Zach on 31 December at Gotha, and one day later by Heinrich Olbers in Bremen.

Spanish ships visited the islands in the 16th century ; the first written record of contact from Europeans with the native inhabitants of the Cook Islands came with the sighting of Pukapuka by Spanish sailor Álvaro de Mendaña in 1595 who called it San Bernardo ( Saint Bernard ).

In 1813, John Williams, a missionary on the Endeavour ( not the same ship as Cook's ), made the first official sighting of the island Rarotonga.

1813 — English missionary John Williams made the first official sighting of Rarotonga.

For further clarification, it should be noted that biblical months always begin at the first sighting of the new moon and that biblical days begin at sundown: thus the evening of the 14th day and the 15th day of the biblical month is the full moon.

He also accompanied Cook's third voyage ( 1776 – 1778 ), this time aboard Resolutions sister ship, and the first European sighting and exploration of the Hawaiian Islands.

Vancouver did eventually learn of the river before he finished his survey — from Robert Gray, captain of the American merchant ship that conducted the first Euroamerican sailing of the Columbia River on 11 May 1792, after first sighting it on an earlier voyage in 1788.

The island's first known sighting by Europeans was on 21 August 1821 by the British ship Eliza Francis ( or Eliza Frances ) owned by Edward, Thomas and William Jarvis and commanded by Captain Brown.

* 1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.

Others were based in the past on the first sighting of a lunar crescent, such as the Hebrew calendar.

Islands in the archipelago were first explored by Europeans in the 1520s, with Spanish explorer Alonso de Salazar sighting an atoll in August 1526.

The first clue is Odysseus ' sighting of Venus just before dawn as he arrives on Ithaca.

The first documented European sighting of the region was made by the Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh and his crew on 10 January 1697.

This first day of the following month is declared after another crescent new moon has been sighted or the completion of 30 days of fasting if no visual sighting is possible due to weather conditions.

The first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship the Gulden Zeepaert, captained by François Thijssen, examined the coastline.

The first known European sighting of Whidbey Island was during the 1790 Spanish expedition of Manuel Quimper and Gonzalo López de Haro on the Princesa Real.

** The first alleged modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster occurs.

Such early discoveries are overlooked however, and the first sighting is claimed a few months later by Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner.

* January – Sebald de Weert makes the first definite sighting of the Falkland Islands.

** Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon makes the first confirmed sighting of Australia by a European.

* A Dutch ship makes the first recorded sighting of the coast of South Australia.

Gracias '', I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary.

When Napoleon's ship had borne him to Elba, French wines had started to cross the Channel, the first shipments in a dozen war-ridden years, but the supplies had not yet reached rural hostelries where the sweet wines of the Spanish peninsula still ruled.

Although Andean Amerindian peoples crafted ceremonial jewelry of gold and other metals the mineralizations of the Andes were first mined in large scale after the Spanish arrival.

The first Spanish Constitution was in 1812.

The first article said " the Spanish Nation is the Spaniards from both sides of the Atlantic ".

* 1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León first sights land in what is now Florida.

In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the first autobiography in Castillian.

One early example is that of Leonor López de Córdoba ( 1362 – 1420 ) who wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish.

A traditional drink of Argentina is an infusion called mate ( in Spanish, mate, with the accent on the first syllable ).

At the turn of the 19th century, immigrants from Naples and Genoa opened the first pizza bars, though Spanish residents subsequently owned most of the pizza businesses.

* 1565 – Cebu is established becoming the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.

The Spanish were the first Europeans to see bouncing rubber balls ( albeit solid and not inflated ) which were employed most notably in the Mesoamerican ballgame.

The first written reference is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, who is most famous for writing Don Quixote.

Again according to convention he posted his most experienced legions on the flanks ( the first and the third legion on his left with Pompey himself commanding, the Syrian legions in the center with Scipio, the Cilician legion and the Spanish cohorts on the right with Afranius ), dispersing his new recruits along the center.

The first option ( although it is debatable to what extent the Duke was committed to such an enterprise ) was a plan to transfer his forces from the Spanish Netherlands to northern Italy ; once there, he intended linking up with Prince Eugene in order to defeat the French and safeguard Savoy from being overrun.

German volunteers first used armour in live field conditions during the Spanish Civil War of 1936.

The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough was one of the first generals in the British Army, fighting campaigns in the War of the Spanish Succession.

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry ", became a catchphrase the world over ( the phrase was used again, first in Ang Lee's Hulk ( 2003 ), although in Spanish, and again in the 2008 movie The Incredible Hulk, with an altered version in Portuguese ).

In games which have a skill element, such as Blackjack or Spanish 21, the house edge is defined as the house advantage from optimal play ( without the use of advanced techniques such as card counting ), on the first hand of the shoe ( the container that holds the cards ).

This was the period when Spanish and Portuguese adventurers and missionaries first visited the country.

These first settlements were abandoned after attacks by Spanish privateers, but English privateers often used the Cayman Islands as a base and in the 18th century they became an increasingly popular hideout for pirates, even after the end of legitimate privateering in 1713.

But under orders of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, he was arrested there, attracting worldwide attention, not only because of the history of Chile and South America, but also because this was one of the first arrests of a former president based on the universal jurisdiction principle.

Numerous subsequent Spanish expeditions followed, eventually leading to the first Spanish colony, Villa Bruselas in Costa Rica in 1524.