PEOPLE IN HISTORY
Six-year-old Leif Eriksson lived on a farm in Greenland. His neighbor, Biarni, came back from a voyage with a story about a strange land to the west.
When he got a little older, Leif bought Biarni’s old boat and outfitted it to sail west to America where he established a colony, traded with the natives and explored parts of the East Coast-498 years before Columbus.
Did You Know?
Albert Einstein loved to sail and he sailed his whole life.
Renowned as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time, by most accounts Einstein was also a terrible sailor! Making a boat go in a particular direction is a very interesting bit of science, so you wouldn’t think he would have had any trouble with it—but you’d be wrong.
What’s the secret to sailing any place you want to go, no matter which way the wind is blowing?