Today the United States – and to be fair, a number of other countries – celebrate Columbus Day. Unlike many other holidays named after a person, this one doesn’t celebrate his birth (for the most part because no one knows exactly when he was born) but when he first landed in the Americas. Interestingly, even that is perhaps a bit of a misnomer, because according to what slim facts there are, land was only sighted on October 12, 1492, and the land in question was an island in The Bahamas. We don’t even know which island it was!
While The Bahamas are in North America, it’s not like he set foot on the US mainland in 1492, and certainly not on that particular day. So why do we celebrate today? Why do we celebrate today at all? Actually, it’s not really today, since here we do things on the closest day to weekend, and, well, that would be Friday, and for some bizarre reason, we do it on the second Monday in October. I don’t know why. Let’s just talk about Columbus instead, okay?
Let’s go back to his birthday. Most agree that Columbus was born in 1451 – sometime between August and October. So the second Monday may actually be his birthday. We just don’t know that. But somehow, we all know that in “1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. Well, there are some people on Beauty and the Geek who don’t know. They think it was 1942. But I digress.
We do know – amazingly – that on the morning of October 12, 1492, land was sighted (but not by Columbus – he was only the man in charge). I’m guessing that this was in a log of some sort. We also know that the land in question was called San Salvador by Columbus, and that it was in The Bahamas. But it may or may not be the island now called San Salvador. So that’s it. That’s what we celebrate today. That Columbus put together an expedition to find a route to Asia by way of the Ocean (Atlantic) Sea. Yes, the Ocean Sea. It’s like taking Main Street Road. But again, I digress.
Let’s ask another question. Do you know the names of the ships? The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, right? Wrong. The ships didn’t really have official names. In fact, the Santa Maria was the flag ship, and it was nicknamed the Gallega. The Pinta was, well, the Pinta. The Nina, meanwhile, was not the Nina at all – it was the Santa Clara. The Nina was it’s nickname. Why do we use one nickname (Nina) and not the other (Gallega)? I guess because the Nina, the Pinta and the Gallega sounds kind of dumb. And the Santa Maria, the Santa Clara and the Pinta sounds odd as well. Just choose your history!
Back to the voyage. Columbus wasn’t looking for America – he was looking for Asia. That’s why Native Americans have been called Indians. He thought he had found India. Look how long it took Political Correctness to overcome that blunder, and we’ve been celebrating this guy since 1792 – some 215 years now. He didn’t even find the right continent! In fact, when he laid out his plan for the trip, he thought it would only be some 2400 miles. Some navigator.
On his first trip, Columbus never even made it to the mainland. In fact, he didn’t get past the islands until his third trip, and that one landed him in South America. On his fourth trip he made it to Central America. When did he get to North America? Never.
When he did finally land – presumably later on the 12th – he did get a decent look around. And he did make four voyages back, over the course of the next ten years or so. He even kept good notes. Several of these entries talked not about the wonderful new lands that he found, or the beauty of them, but the fact that they had lots of gold and the inhabitants would make wonderful slaves. Nice.
Let’s recap. He didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know how long it would take to get there, he wasn’t the one who would be the first to spot the new land, he didn’t actually land on our continent’s mainland, and when he did get where he was going, he wanted to plunder the natural resources and sell off what he could for his personal profit. Yet he gets a holiday, celebrated for more than 200 years. That’s what makes this country great.