Skip to content
Wellsprings
Mind-Benders of Hindu History

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he was a six-year-old in Bengal

Chaitanya Mahāprabhu, whose ecstatic devotional movement reshaped the religious life of eastern India, was born in the town of Nabadwip in Bengal on 18 February 1486. That made him a child of six in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic and made landfall in the Americas — the two events, an ocean and a world apart, fell within the same childhood.

How we know

Chaitanya Mahāprabhu born 18 February 1486 at Nabadwip, Bengal; died 1534. Columbus made landfall in the Americas in October 1492. 1492 − 1486 = 6.

One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.