"Some people celebreat Columbus [Day] while others villify him..."
- World History for Dummies
Sponsored by some of the biggest idiots that ever ruled Spain, Columbus himself was an even bigger one. He made four trips to the "Indies" (map below, top), died during the last one, and according to World History for Dummies, he committed three major errors:
~ Thinking that Asia was a lot larger than it was in reality.
~ Finding the Earth's radius to be three-fourths of what it truly is.
~ Being stubborn enough not to reevaluate his position.
Not to mention that he didn't really discover America, Leif Erikson was there about 500 years before him. The only two good things he has to his name is discovering hammocks and pineapples, but someone would've done that later anyway.
Did you know that he actually kept two logs, one with true distances, and another was a false one to give the crew the impression they'd gone farther than they had in order to keep them sated.
The stories of him torturing Native Americans is also well known (to him they were Indians, and that was another thing he refused to accept, that they could be from a whole different continent). Not that that was semi-provoked, the natives weren't exactly nice to him either, but it was their land.
Did you know that there are no surviving paintings of Christopher Columbus? All the paintings you'll see of him were done after his death (below, middle). No one knows what he really looks like
Oh, and my mom just picked up this awesome looking book called The Book of General Ignorance (depicted below, bottom). It has a bunch of random stuff like "Do Marmots [Groundhogs] Kill People?" and "How Do Lemmings Die". It's hilarious! =)
We were bored and came up with this -
3 comments:
for the david versus ryan, do you mean academically or in sports, or in a fight, or what? because it depends.
I've always enjoyed looking at old maps, comparing their conception of the world to what we know now. I hope you'll share some of the content of that book, it sounds interesting.
Smiles, Leigh
As to Turtles question, it doesn't matter. We were just bored and felt like putting that on there. He was over when I wrote it.
I love old maps! I just like that faded yellow color, and the fact that they are old though. =) I make sure to put some stuff from the book on the site!
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