Brazil

On 22 April 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral sighted a mountain on the Brazilian coast and claimed it for Portugal. The territory had already been assigned to his king six years earlier, by a line drawn through an ocean that no one could accurately locate.

On 22 January 1808, the Portuguese royal court arrived in Brazil after fleeing Napoleon. The colony became the empire's capital, Britain got the trade access it had always wanted, and Portugal spent a decade governing itself from the wrong continent.