That's right; guys like Magellan and Marco Polo opened up new frontiers of human exploration and when they returned, told stories that were laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Why? Just for the hell of it, apparently.

If you take a list of history's greatest explorers, and hold it up to a list of history's greatest bullshitters, you quickly find out they're the same list.

6 Ferdinand Magellan Names an Entire Country After Giants

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Who?

Ever hear of a little thing called the world? Yeah, Magellan discovered that. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration but between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan did lead the first successful expedition to sail around the damn thing.



This damn thing.

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We use the term "successful" loosely, since he didn't exactly "survive" it, but he was still pretty close. And since history books are like horseshoes and hand grenades in that "close enough" usually counts (we're looking at you Thomas Edison), Magellan gets full credit. He not only found a route to the East, he also took invaluable surveys of his route, documenting things like the Strait of Magellan and the Magellanic Penguin. He, uh... he really took advantage of that whole "if you're the first to see it, then you get to name it" thing didn't he?



Please Magellanites, throw down your Magellan sticks and get off of Magellan Beach!

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So What Did He Lie About?

Giants. A race of giants.

While traveling around the southern tip of South America, Magellan and his men claimed that they came across "a naked man of giant stature" who was "so tall that we reached only to his waist."