Manuel Luciano da Silva

Manuel Luciano da Silva (1926-2012) was a medical doctor . He was born in Portugal at Cavião, Vale de Cambra, in a humble family. In 1946 he left Portugal to join his father who was working in the USA as a sea captain in Brooklyn, New York. After his father´s death he came back to Portugal and got his medical degree in the University of Coimbra in 1957 with honours. One year later he decided to go back to USA where he worked as a doctor at St Luke´s hospital in New Bedford, MA and later in Bristol, RI. He retired from the medical activity in 1998 but his interest as investigator and author continued. His work Cristovão Colombo era Português! was adapted to the cinema by Manoel de Oliveira. He defended that Christopher Colombus was Portuguese.

He studied the history of the Dighton Rock and its mysterious inscriptions, which he attributed to the Portuguese navigator Miguel Corte Real and was the driving force for the creation of the Dighton Rock Museum. 

The Portuguese Caravel inside the Dighton Rock Museum

Dighton Rock inside the museum

In 2001 the library and museum Manuel Luciano da Silva was inaugurated at Cavião.