third world

     When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, he discovered what was, to his fellow Europeans, a "New World".  After Europeans learned of the existence of the continents of North and South America, they were called the "New World".  Europe, the Middle East and part of Africa became the "Old World". Countries which fit into neither of these categories, and which seem to have become a part of our mental universe later, are commonly called the "Third World".