The most south­west­ern point of the African con­ti­nent. There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that the Cape of Good Hope is the south­ern­most point of Africa. This is not true. The south­ern­most point is Cape Agul­has. In the 1480s, Por­tuguese explor­er Bar­tolomeu Dias named the place Cabo das Tor­men­tas (“Cape of Storms”). Years lat­er, João II of Por­tu­gal renamed it Cabo da Boa Esper­ança (“Cape of Good Hope”), a more opti­mistic name for the sea route that many ships trav­eled to get between the Atlantic and Indi­an Oceans.