Portuguese colonization of the Americas on 22 April, Cabral landed on the coast, in Porto Seguro. Believing the land to be an island, he named it Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross). The previous expedition of Vasco da Gama to India already recorded several signs of land near its western open Atlantic Ocean route, in 1497. It has also been suggested that Duarte Pacheco Pereira may have discovered the coasts of Brazil in 1498, possible its northeast, but the exact area of the expedition and the explored regions remain unclear. On the other hand, some historians have suggested that the Portuguese may
Time in Portugal Empire: although almost all continental Portugal is located west of the 7.5°W meridian (i.e. in the theoretical zone of time zone), for mainland Portugal it was adopted as its time zone. By the same law, time zone was adopted for the Azores and Cape Verde, for Madeira and Portuguese Guinea, for São Tomé and Príncipe and São João Baptista de Ajudá, for Angola, for Mozambique, for Portuguese India and for Macau and Portuguese Timor. These time zones were adopted on 1 January 1912. Daylight saving time ("Hora de Verão", in Portuguese) was observed for the first time in 1916, during