IT IS OF COURSE QUESTIONABLE whether we should have a holiday called "Columbus Day", being as how christopher columbus was a murdering butcher, and most certainly was not the first person to do anything important, spectacular, or amazing.
He wanted to get to india and china by water going west, rather than by land going east, and he lived his entire remaining life, which wasn't very long, thinking he had done exactly that, which he most certainly had not.
The most popular misconception about columbus is that he and his crew were fearful that the earth might indeed be flat, and that they might fall off the edge, and that they intended to prove it was round.
Of course all educated europeans knew the world is round during columbus's lifetime, and all arabs had known it for a thousand years.
It may be that we should have a "human exploration day", rather than a colubus day, but at least christopher colulmbus symbolizes, if nothing else, the human spirit of discovery and exploration.
Bb
No comments:
Post a Comment