Juan Díaz de Solís
16th Century navigator and explorer
Juan Díaz de Solís (c. 1470 – 20 January 1516) was a 16th-century navigator and explorer. He is also said to be the first European to land in what is now Uruguay.
Biography
His origins are disputed. One document records him as a Portuguese in the service of Castile ("Spain"), having possibly been born in Lisbon or São Pedro de Solis. Others claim that his birth took place in Lebrija, in what is now the province of Seville, Spain, where documentation testifies that he lived when he was in Castile, as vecino ("neighbor"), meaning living there. However he began his naval career in Portugal as João Dias de Solis, where he became a pilot in the Portuguese India Armadas. After leaving his home in Lisbon he embarked on a ship to India that he was going to navigate as pilot, a ship captained by Afonso de Albuquerque, in the 1506 armada of Tristão da Cunha. The day the fleet weighed anchor was the very day he was accused of the death of his wife. He also served as a privateer in French fleets for a short time before serving, later, the Spanish Crown.
He served as navigator on expeditions to the Yucatán in 1506-1507 and Brazil in 1508 with Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.
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This entry incorporates text from “Juan Díaz de Solís” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.