THE EYES OF DISCOVERY (439 pp.)John BakelessLippincott ($5).
"It was midnight of October 11-12 and the whole course of world history was going to change forever in just two hours more. Nobody quite realized that. But every man in the fleet, from the Admiral to the smallest page boy, was tensely alert . . . 'Tierra! Tierra!' bawled [the lookout on the Pinta] . . . The ship's biggest piece of artillery, a 'lombard,' had been standing, loaded and primed, ready to fire a signal the moment there was news . . . 'Bang!' went the lombard. North America had been discovered."
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