Strait of Magellan

Four hundred eighty-six years ago this week, the Strait of Magellan was first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan.

After celebrating Halloween, you might like to drink a toast to Ferdinand Magellan... or else build a small, miniature replica of an early sailing vessel. For it was on November 1, 1520, while circumnavigating the world, that Ferdinand Magellan entered the soon-after-to-be-named Strait of Magellan.

Until the completion of the Panama Canal in the early 20th century, the Strait of Magellan was the most important passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The strait is located between the southern tip of South America and the Tierra del Fuego ( meaning "Land of Fire") archipelago to the south.

The strait was found to be thank-you-very-much superior to the perilous Drake Passage with its rough, icy, ship-splintering waters churning and shifting in a narrow stretch of water between Cape Horn and the icebergs of Antarctica.

So if you only have one day a year to spend on celebrating an early waterway voyage of discovery, you’ll probably want to choose Magellan’s strait and pooh-pooh all others. Yes, leave the celebrating of Drake Passage to the few die-hard loyalists who are probably all descendants of Sir Francis Drake and have a dubious vested interest in preserving his name. And, anyway, he was a pirate.