It’s the second Monday of October and this means it’s Columbus Day, the day the American people honor Christopher Columbus the man who discovered America.
If you live in New York you might head off to the Columbus Day Parade which takes place every year on the second Monday of October. This year the Columbus Parade will start at 11.30 am and will last until 2 pm. The route will be from 47th Street to 72th Street. The Columbus Day Parade include music concerts, dancers, vintage cars and many things to eat and drink. This will be the 66th annual parade held in NYC.
Also, since this is a national holiday since 1937, many banks will be closed and the mail is not working, so please try not to use the bank services and use the e-mail if you have to send something to your friends today. It’s a special occasion for all of us to enjoy and honor the man who discovered the land of what we call today America.
The history begins in 1492 when Christopher Columbus and his fleet got to the shores of America, a new land nobody had ever discovered before. In the United States of America this is called Columbus Day while in many countries of the Americas this is known as Dia de la Raza, in the Bahamas is called Discovery Day.
Here are some amazing and yet funny Columbus Day Facts:
1. Some say that Christopher Columbus never set foot on American foil, but in fact he did landed on a small island in the Bahamas. He named that island San Salvador and it was called Guanahani by the natives but the truth is it was never proved what island did Columbus set foot on first.
2. Although we all learned in school that Columbus had three famous ships: The Nina, Pinta and Santa Monica, the truth is that the only one that was true is The Pinta. The other two were Gallega (instead of Santa Maria) and Santa Clara (instead of the Nina). Why these names were invented, ask your teacher!
3. Although Columbus Day is celebrated as a patriotic day, many people think of this as a day of cruelty and slavery. That’s because the colonization of America included the death of millions of natives, the slavery of those who lived the lands before Columbus discovered it. Some call it the “Day of Indigenous Resistance” to honor the indigenous people that were killed by Columbus. The indigenous people were the Arawaks and they were either killed either enslaved to dig gold from the mines. Also, some say that the Arawaks were persecuted and Columbus treated them that way so they would not have to think, so he and his men would subjugate them. Between 1492 and 1508 more than 3 million people, natives, perished and by 1650 no Arawaks or any of their descendants remained alive.
4. Although you probably won’t hear this from your history teacher, many people say that Columbus was addicted to opium but that theory was never proven. Opium was the first drug to be used in those days, it is the substance used to create the today’s heroin.
5. Another not-so-good thing about Columbus: he and his men are said to have brought the syphilis back to Europe. And the truth is that Christopher Columbus wasn’t his real name. According to various experts, his true name was Crisstofa Corumbo and Christopher Columbus is the English translation of his name.
How are you celebrating Columbus Day this year? Are you going to any parade?
Why not have a Hitler Day while we’re at it?
This holiday should be abolished.
He was simply he first white guy to vacation in the Bahamas.
Good one, Krista.
You made the beer I’m drinking come out of my nose!
That was funny.
I fail to see how the death of millions of indigenous people, Columbus’ drug addiction or prevailing falsities in our history textbooks qualify as “amazing yet funny.” If anything it’s all very, very sad. There is no reason why this country should be “celebrating” Christopher Columbus.
thank you so much this was helpful thanx
Historian: Columbus Was a Portuguese Agent
By Alexandra Vilchez
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina – The life of Christopher Columbus remains largely shrouded in mystery because he was in fact a James Bond-style secret agent for King John II of Portugal.
That is the thesis of the book “Colon: La Historia Nunca Contada” (Columbus: The Untold Story) by Portuguese historian Manuel Rosa, who lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Beginning this week, the historian will present his book in Badajoz, Spain, and will take part in several conferences in Portugal and Brussels.
Rosa began studying the discoverer in 1991 after reading a book claiming that Columbus married a woman of the Portuguese nobility.
“I realized that the whole story had been invented by historians, that in truth Columbus was a ‘secret agent’ like James Bond for King John II of Portugal, and that he fooled the Spanish royalty with the promise that he could reach India sailing west,” he said.
According to Rosa, the Spanish explorer convinced Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to open a new route to the “false India” to clear the way for the Portuguese to round Africa and reach the real India, where there were deposits of gold.
Since a rivalry existed between Castile and Portugal to achieve hegemony over the Atlantic trade route, in 1483 Isabella planned the assassination of John II with the aid of two highly placed Portuguese nobles, nephews of Columbus.
This moved the Portuguese king to work out a conspiracy with the help of the admiral, who infiltrated the court of Castile accompanying his traitorous nephews.
For Rosa, the most controversial part of the story is where Columbus originally came from. Most theories accept the idea that he was born in the Italian city of Genova, and that he was a “very poor” weaver who rose to become a captain.
“Colon married Filipa Moniz 15 years before becoming famous, something that would not have been possible for a plebeian because she was a Portuguese noblewoman who lived in an exclusive monastery and was commander of the military order of St. James of the Sword in that country,” he said.
The author adds in his book that Columbus was a Portuguese nobleman, son of Poland’s King Wladyslaw III, who lived in exile on the Portuguese island of Madeira after a battle with the Turks.
The historian presents in the book nine documents related to the discovery of America that were “overlooked” by Portugal, including the image of the document proving that Felipa Moniz was a member of the order of St. James.
Rosa followed closely the DNA analysis of Columbus’s bones, which was compared with those from blood samples of Portuguese individuals including Duke Duarte of Braganza.
The genetic identification of the skeletal remains showed that none of the Colombo family in Italy, France or Spain had DNA compatible with Columbus’ bones, so that it was “impossible that the admiral was the Italian Cristoforo Colombo, Genoese by blood.”
“He could not have been Italian because he never wrote a letter in that language, all were in Spanish with Portuguese phrases, which shows that it was his first language. And in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella he called Portugal ‘the land of my birth,’” he said.
Some academics like Antonio Vicente, a professor at the University of Lisbon, say that Rosa’s book is the “first to be written about Columbus without being influenced by previous accounts and which develops each hypothesis point by point.”
The weightiest commentary comes from Joaquim Verissimo Serrao, a Portuguese historian and recipient of the 1995 Asturias Prize for Social Sciences, who wrote the book’s prologue.
“Rosa has woven a story about the discoverer of the New World, in a work of revision that deserves to be described as serious and diligent…he has given himself up completely to the greatest dream of his life. And that dream is the new biography of Cristopher Columbus,” Verissimo writes. EFE
How can you discover something if someone else already has it?
OH MY GOD that’s funny we are debating on if he should have a holiday and im like HELL TO THE NO!! and eveybodys like Y not and im think he is a bad person and really annoying