The Atlantic Ocean is the world's second-largest ocean, stretching between the Americas on one side and Europe and Africa on the other. If you looked at a globe and traced your finger from New York to London, or from Brazil to South Africa, you'd be crossing the Atlantic.

For most of human history, the Atlantic was a barrier that kept civilizations apart. Ancient Europeans knew nothing of the Americas, and people in the Americas had never seen Europe or Africa. But starting in the 1400s, explorers like Christopher Columbus began making the dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, connecting worlds that had developed separately for thousands of years. These crossings changed history forever, leading to an exchange of crops, animals, ideas, and people between continents.

The Atlantic has shaped countless stories of exploration, immigration, and trade. It's where the Titanic sank in 1912, where American and European forces crossed to fight in World War II, and where millions of enslaved Africans were forced across the ocean during the transatlantic slave trade, as well as millions of immigrants who traveled by ship to start new lives. Today, airplanes cross the Atlantic in hours, carrying people and goods between continents that once seemed impossibly far apart.