Why did the Europeans begin to sail west? What were they hoping to find?

At first, explorers were looking for a shorter route to Asia. They hoped that they would find this route by sailing west. As the European countries claimed land in the New World, this gave people a chance to go there to spread Christianity.

i do not know if this question has options, but a main impact of the federal reserve act of 1913, which created the federal reserve bank, was the international use of the u.s. dollar, which soon became the world's leading currency - particularly during world war i, since many nations around the world asked the united states for money.