“After the discovery of the new world, the pope mediated a dispute between Portugal and Spain to renegotiate a previous treaty that gave Portugal exclusive rights to trade and colonization below the canaries, with the goal of making a vertical line instead and having this new world fall under Spain’s sphere. Amid the negotiation, the Portuguese randomly asked that the line be moved west by a few thousand miles or so. This only gave Portugal more sea while potentially giving Spain land in the Pacific, so they accepted. A few years later, Brazil was “discovered”, with its gold mines, tropical wood and cash crop climate, placed under Portuguese rule by that line shift.”