Today is the federally recognized holiday that honors Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America. Every school aged child is told the story. Although Columbus was Italian, he sailed for the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He made four trips to the Americas and proved that the Earth was round instead of flat. He was a great man.
Except . . . most of this is bunk.
Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands, but never set foot in North America. (Actually explorer John Cabot gets the credit for being the first European to land there.) Several famous philosophers and scientists — Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Euclid –had already concluded the Earth was a sphere long before 1492. According to The Washington Post “the big question was not the shape of the Earth but the size of the ocean Columbus had to cross.”
Laurence Bergren, in his biography Columbus, notes that he committed atrocities against native peoples and terrorized the Spanish colonists. He isn’t responsible directly for the almost complete decimation of Indigenous Peoples, but he certainly set a poor example.
Which might make one wonder why we’re honoring him. Perhaps this holiday should go the same way as the Confederate flag.
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