Posted on 10/09/2017 4:27:19 AM PDT by Chickensoup
IN 1492
In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.
He sailed by night; he sailed by day; He used the stars to find his way.
A compass also helped him know How to find the way to go.
Ninety sailors were on board; Some men worked while others snored.
Then the workers went to sleep; And others watched the ocean deep.
Day after day they looked for land; They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.
October 12 their dream came true, You never saw a happier crew!
“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried; His heart was filled with joyful pride.
But “India” the land was not; It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.
The Arakawa natives were very nice; They gave the sailors food and spice.
Columbus sailed on to find some gold To bring back home, as he’d been told.
He made the trip again and again, Trading gold to bring to Spain.
The first American? No, not quite. But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.
“The aggrieved are permanently aggrieved.”
Money quote! And never appease the b@stards!
They also came from Europe, too...the Northeastern Indians came from the East to settle...
There are Viking remains in Newfoundland; unlike Columbus, they actually reached the mainland (centuries before, but they couldn’t protect themselves against the Indians).
Columbus did reach the mainland (in Central America) on a later voyage. Newfoundland is an island, but the Norse explorers did step foot on the mainland of North America elsewhere. The Indigenous People of Newfoundland were very hostile, even without the Norse doing anything to provoke them.
Columbus was one of the luckiest sons of guns who ever lived. First he trusted his own calculations of the planet’s circumference over those of Eratosthenes. Plus be believed the earth was pear-shaped, and considerably smaller in the northern hemisphere than at the equator. And he trusted in the accuracy of the maps of Asia that had been based on the accounts of Marco Polo. Except Polo had greatly exaggerated the size of Asia to make his exploits seem all the more heroic. Taken together, Columbus underestimated the distance from Europe to Asia (when sailing to the west) by on the order of 12,000 miles.
A Spanish Caravelle could sail about 3500 miles on a full ration of food an water so the typical exploratory tactic was to sail outbound on the order of 1750 miles, and if you hadn’t made landfall by that point, you’d turn around and come home. Except it was 3100 miles before Columbus reached the Bahamas (which was barely a quarter of the way to his intended destination of Asia).
And contrary to popular myth, his crew were not condemned convicts or derelict sailors who couldn’t get real work. They were among the most experienced and accomplished sailors at Ferdinand and Isabella’s disposal. The sort of men who’d have had a pretty finely-honed sense for when they’d reached (and passed) that point of no return. And they’d have known they were weeks beyond it before they reached the Bahamas.
So somewhere before they made landfall, they probably had a staff meeting with Chris to voice their concerns. Whether they were brandishing knives (and whether Chris was standing or prostrate) when this conversation took place isn’t known, but what is known is Columbus must have been one heck of a salesman, else they’d probably have slit his throat, tossed his body into the ocean, and sworn to God that he’d died of scurvy.
Instead he stumbled onto a 63 square mile island he had no reason to know was there in a 41 million square mile ocean and earned a permanent spot in the history of the world. He might have been Italian but he had the luck of the Irish.
It is interesting that you do not know this. May I ask how old you are? I find that some of the younger people I work with have a very different education in history than I do.”
Know that the Clovis people crossed the open ocean when it was frozen. I’ve never seen any proof. Please reveal the proof.
Actually I have visited several of the sites in New Mexico and all stated they crossed the Bering Straits when the land masses joined.
No, I meant be aware of the theory.
I see; the province is Newfoundland and Labrador, but you’re right - Newfoundland is an island.
Well, Columbus may have visited Ireland at one point...so maybe some of the luck of the Irish rubbed off on him.
The exact date Leif reached Vinland is not known but it was in the fall. Wisconsin designated October 9 as Leif Erikson Day as far back as 1929 and Congress later named October 9 as Leif Erikson Day for the nation. I don't know if it was proclaimed this year.
Leif doesn't furnish as good a target as Christopher Columbus--he didn't try to enslave any of the natives and he isn't known to have brought any European diseases along.
Leif Erikson was certainly a slave owner and had violent confrontations with Indians. It would have been unusual for a Viking not to capture slaves. There’s just much less of a written record than with Columbus.
And, in the end, Leif Erikson probably became a Christian, sealing his fate as white supremacist.
Humans migrate for many reasons. The “indigenous” people in America migrated. When two groups of people run into each other, many times the inferior culture disappears or is absorbed into the superior one.
The Europeans were superior in technology, science, weaponry, social organization, organized religion, laws, governments, building, medicine, transportation and so on. The people who were here were overrun, as the europeans population increased and needed more space and resources. Wars were fought and land settled and the people with seniority lost out. Those are the facts of life.
This anti-columbus movement is anchored by leftists and Mexicans in the US who forget they have Spanish blood in them.
Columbus was brave and a great explorer. As a person of European descent, I am thankful he came here. I know his voyages lead to the greatest nation in the history of the word. That’s why I celebrate Columbus day. If you want a day get your own.
Bow that’s the way in which history should be taught!
He definitely was a Christian--had become one shortly before his exploration of the lands to the west of Greenland (seen earlier in 986 by Bjarni Herjolfsson, who had not gone ashore). He converted his mother but not his father to Christianity.
Of course slavery was horrible, but so was Aztec human sacrifice and Mongol massacres and a lot of other human actions in the past. Perhaps the energy would be better directed to getting rid of slavery where it still exists.
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