Vasco da Gama was best known for being the first to sail from Europe to India by rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Over the course of two voyages, beginning in 1497 and 1502, da Gama landed and traded in locales along the coast of southern Africa before reaching India on May 20, 1498.

1460s  24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497 1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans.