Christopher Columbus sailed westward in 1492, hoping to find a new route to China and South Asia, but he hit a major roadblock — the Americas — and landed in the Caribbean.
Columbus wasn't the first European to reach the Western Hemisphere; the Vikings had landed in Newfoundland about 500 years earlier. But the Vikings didn't colonize North America, and Columbus' expedition led to the large-scale colonization of the Western Hemisphere by Europeans.
