The Unfortunate End of F. Magellan

I picked up a book about Ferdinand Magellan at the used bookstore a few weeks back. The title is Over the Edge of the World by L. Bergreen. It was one of those situations where I wasn't looking for it, but I read the back and thought "Hu...I really don't know anything about him other than that he was the first to sail around the world." So I bought it for $1.50.
I have to tell you it took me forever to read. I don't know why since the book isn't really that long. I guess maybe the words were small, or it might have been the fact that I often had to go back and figure out who was who, and look at the map for visual support. That's not to say it wasn't a good book though. As any avid reader of exploration adventures knows, it's often a complicated thing to read about ocean voyages, the route taken, weather, and ship wide politics. There is just no easy or simple way of describing any of it.Anyway, it was worth reading for sure. But in case you don't have time, or you just aren't that interested I thought I might sum up a few facts that you probably don't know about this 16th century explorer.

• Although Magellan sailed for King Charles of Spain, he was born in Portugal
• Magellan wanted to find the Spice Islands for Portugal, but the King denied him (because the king had secretly set up a trade colony in the Spice Islands 10 years earlier (but didn't want Spain to know) and didn't need to "find a new route")
• Magellan had five ships called the Trinidad, Victoria, San Antonio, Conception and Santiago
• Only Victoria made it home.
• From the start (before the ships left Seville) there were plans of mutiny because of the divided Spanish/Portuguese crew.
• Magellan tortured one of the captains of his ship for homosexuality (brutally tortured to cause maximum suffering) put mutineers heads on stakes around the ships as a reminder of who was boss, and even abandoned conspirators (and a priest) on desolate islands along the way.
• San Antonio abandoned the fleet off the coast of Argentina and headed back to Spain along with most of the supplies.
• While crossing the Pacific most of the crew members succumbed to scurvy, but the officers did not because they had unwittingly brought jam aboard made from an apple like fruit that contained enough vitamin C to ward off the disease. They thought it was divine intervention.
• Saint Elmo's fire (an electrical charge that would extend from the highest mast of a ship into the sky) was considered a sign from God that Magellan was doing "Gods work" and the only reason the sailors didn't mutiny on several occasions.
  
• Magellan never made it all the way around the world!?! He was killed in an unnecessary skirmish with some Philippines Islanders, and literally hacked to pieces in front of the surviving crew members.
• Out of 260 that started the voyage only 24 (I think or 21?) made it back alive, and thus were the actual first persons to sail around the globe.
• Most of Magellan's story survived because a journal by Antonio Pigafetta (a passenger from Venice, and one of the survivors) was kept the entire voyage at Magellan's request.

Can you believe the one thing I thought I knew about Magellan turned out to be untrue! He didn't sail all the way around the world. The truth is he sailed a little more than half way around the world then got hacked into fish bait. I didn't know that! Did you?