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Oct 8, 2015 · Opinion. Five myths about Christopher Columbus. By Kris Lane. October 8, 2015 at 4:03 p.m. EDT. Christopher Columbus wasn't Italian? Kris Lane, professor of colonial Latin American...
- Columbus landed on "U.S." soil: False. For one thing, Columbus wasn't even the first explorer to reach North America (many believe that honor belongs to Leif Erikson).
- Columbus was kind to the Native Americans: False. The stories of Columbus' earliest interactions with Native Americans will probably make you shudder.
- Columbus was Italian: False. While Columbus was born in Genoa, which is today considered a part of Italy, back in the late 15th century and early 16th century there was no such country.
- His name was really Christopher Columbus: False. Believe it or not, Christopher Columbus changed his name to "Cristobal Colon" to sound more Spanish (you know, because he was sailing in the name of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella).
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Monday is Columbus Day, time to buy appliances on sale and contemplate other things that have nothing to do with Christopher Columbus. So much of what we say about Columbus is either wholly untrue or greatly exaggerated. Here are a few of the top offenders.
If he did, he was about 2,000 years too late. Ancient Greek mathematicians had already proven that the Earth was round, not flat. Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C.E. was one of the originators of the idea. Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. provided the physical evidence, such as the shadow of the Earth on the moon and the curvature of the E...
Yes, let's ignore the fact that millions of humans already inhabited this land later to be called the Americas, having discovered it millennia before. And let's ignore that whole Leif Ericson voyage to Greenland and modern-day Canada around 1000 C.M.E. If Columbus discovered America, he himself didn't know. Until his death he claimed to have landed...
But aside from descriptions of syphilis-like lesions by Hippocrates, many researchers believe that there was a syphilis outbreak in, of all places, a 13th-century Augustinian friary in the English port of Kingston upon Hull. This coastal city saw a continual influx of sailors from distant lands, and you know what sailors can do. Carbon dating and D...
Columbus wasn't a rich man when he died in Spain at age 54 in 1506. But he wasn't impoverished. He was living comfortably, economically speaking, in an apartment in Valladolid, Crown of Castile, in present-day Spain, albeit in pain from severe arthritis. Columbus had been arrested years prior on accusations of tyranny and brutality toward native pe...
After his death, though, his family sued the royal crown, a famous lawsuit known as the Pleitos colombinos, or Columbian lawsuits, lasting nearly 20 years. Columbus' heirs ultimately secured significant amounts of property and other riches from the crown. Also, most European navigators understood by the end of the 15th century, before his death, th...
With all this talk of a hapless Columbus accidentally discovering the New World, as well as the subsequent genocide of native cultures, it is easy to understand the current backlash against Columbus and the national holiday called Columbus Day, celebrated throughout North and South America. This isn't entirely fair. While Columbus was wrong about m...
News of the success of his first voyage spread like wildfire through Europe, setting the stage for an era of European conquest. One can argue whether the conquest was good or bad for humanity: that is, the spread of Christianity, rise of modernism, exploitation and annihilation of native cultures, and so on. But it is difficult to deny Columbus' di...
Christopher Wanjek is the author of the books \"Bad Medicine\" and \"Food At Work.\" His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on LiveScience.
Oct 11, 2015 · Let’s revisit some of the biggest misconceptions about the man Monday’s federal holiday is named for. 1. Columbus proved the “flat Earth” theory wrong. In an early scene in the 1992 Ridley ...
Oct 10, 2015 · 1. Columbus proved the “flat Earth” theory wrong. In an early scene in the 1992 Ridley Scott film “1492: Conquest of Paradise,” Columbus, played by Gérard Depardieu, gazes out at the Atlantic...
Oct 14, 2019 · The common myth — that Columbus defied flat-Earth believing geographers to make his voyage — comes from the inaccurate 1828 biography “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” written by Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” 2. Nobody knows what happened to the Niña and the Pinta.
Oct 5, 2012 · 1. Columbus didn’t set out to prove the earth was round. The Real Story of Columbus. Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for...
