Monday, October 8, 2012

christopher columbus!

If you don't work in a bank or at the post office, you probably don't know that it's Columbus Day today.  Well, it is, so Happy Columbus Day to you as you ponder Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492 and theoretically discovering America. For instance:
--  Why get on a ship, leave Queen Isabella, and risk falling off the end of the earth?  Was he 100% sure that the earth was round?  Was it hard to talk other people into sailing with him?
--  He apparently never accepted the fact that he had discovered a New World, convincing himself that he had just really found a different way to the East Indies, his original destination.
--  Why stubbornly continue to call the natives of this new land Indians?  Didn't he have anybody standing next to him saying, "Hey, dude, you're not in India, get some reality -- Can't you come up with a different name for these people?"
--  If he hadn't discovered America, would we all be squeezed into Europe?
--  Was it just dumb luck?

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