BIOGRAPHY~CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS~
OCTOBER 10TH IS CELEBRATED AS A NATIONAL HOLIDAY
HONORING ~CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS~ ACROSS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
Free Resource ~ Teaching & Education ~ Biography ~ Christopher Columbus:
Ten Facts About Christopher Columbus
as taken from Free Resourse
Research by S.Henniman
"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…"
The story that Christopher Columbus first discovered
North America in 1492 has become what most people
consider a fact. Children learn this little bit of history
in their first year of school. But did Columbus really
discover North America? Many people know that history books
often portray this inaccurately, especially those written
for use in our public schools. Archaeologists have dated
the early natives of North America to have been well established
long before even the Vikings set foot in New England,
which also predates Columbus' voyage to the New World.
In addition, Columbus never actually set foot upon American soil
but instead landed on an island in the Bahamas.
Want to know more about Columbus, read our A Timeline of the Life
and Explorations or Christopher Columbus article.
Americans believe him to be a great hero who accomplished an
amazing feat by sailing across the ocean with three ships,
the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, in search of new lands.
Even the paintings that depict Christopher Columbus are not based
on knowledge of what he really looked like, and it remains
a mystery to this day. The way that Christopher Columbus is depicted
and the stark truth about his life are drastically different.
Here are some other facts about Christopher Columbus
that are little known and surprising.
-Columbus first began his sailing career at the young age of fourteen.
In 1476, he took his first sailing venture into the Atlantic Ocean
aboard a vessel that was part of a fleet of five commercial ships
headed to England. However, the fleet was attacked by French privateers,
and both sides suffered the loss of several ships.
Columbus was unfortunate enough to be aboard a ship that was burned,
and he was left drifting in the ocean clinging to debris from the
ruined vessel. He eventually made it six miles to the shores of Portugal,
where he recovered from his ordeal. Soon thereafter he met and married
a woman named Felipa and moved to the island of Madeira,
where Felipa gave birth to a son named Diego.
Shortly after his sons' birth, Felipa died.
-It was not Christopher Columbus' idea to sail across the ocean.
The credit for this idea belongs to his brother, Bartholomew.
He was a map maker who lived in Lisbon, Portugal.
According to a personal diary belonging to Bartholomew,
he shared his idea with his brother, who embraced it's possibilities
for fame and fortune. Columbus had dreamed of sailing across
the world since he was a young boy, to see if one really would
"fall off" the ends of the earth.
-Christopher Columbus was not the first person to dispute the belief
that the world was flat, as was most widely believed.
This great honor rightfully belongs to the scholar Aristotle,
who showed that the earth casts a shadow upon the moon during an eclipse
that is spherical in shape.
-The discovery of North America was not philosophical in nature at all,
because Columbus' intention was to find a faster trade route to China and India,
in order acquire more economic status by shortening the route.
Finding the Americas was purely an accident.
Colombus was known to be a very mean man, and was eventually arrested for
his atrocious crimes against his people while he was governor of the colony
Hispaniola. His cruelty caused him to be arrested and returned to Spain.
For his brutalities to be considered worthy of arrest and trial
(23 people testified against him), his actions had to have been extremely
bad given the time period. He was found innocent, possibly because of
his staunchest defenders, the King and Queen of Spain.
-He was an opium addict. Opium is the dried latex from poppies.
It contains 12% morphine, and is the same drug that is chemically altered
to produce heroin today. Opium use during the 1400s was not uncommon,
in fact the King and Queen of Spain also indulged in this habit.
It does however, cast more doubt on Christopher Columbus
as being a great hero.
-It is written in many historical texts that Columbus and his men
may have been responsible for introducing Syphilis to Europe.
There is new genetic evidence supporting this theory. Columbus and his men
are believed to have brought the disease, which is sexually transmitted,
to Europe in 1493. An estimated five million people died in Europe as a result
of a massive Syphilis epidemic.
-Columbus incorrectly estimated the circumference of the earth,
as well as the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan.
Many scholars followed this faulty train of thought, so it is likely
that even these declarations made about distance were not original ideas
that Columbus him came up with. One such scholar that believed
these ideas to be fact was geographer Paulo de Pozzi Toscanelli, and
Columbus was thought to have maintained frequent correspondence with him.
-He had another son out of wedlock, with a woman named Beatriz Enriquez
de Arana. He carried on a love affair with Beatriz for many years
but never married her. His second sons' name was Ferdinand,
who accompanied his father on his last voyage to the Americas.
-It is commonly thought by many researchers that the original
misconception that the American indigenous peoples were barbaric
and unclean came from Christopher Columbus. This carried so much weight
that all of Europe maintained this faulty belief upon settlement
of the American colonies. No one ever attempted to learn
the intricacies of the native cultures at all, but instead sought
to eradicate the people. White men brought with them to the Americas
many diseases such as Small Pox, Diphtheria and Measles which wiped out
entire populations of native people.
Much remains of what is less commonly known about the life
of Christopher Columbus.
It would be an insightful contribution to American history,
especially in the public schools, for these less positive
aspects of his life to come to light.
History it is full of the good and the bad sides of human nature,
but if we are to fully understand our own origins,
we need both sides of every story
~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Long before there was me and you
Whether he discovered America or not
He sailed many a sea in a yacht
Through treacherous storms of the sea
He held fast to ideals of the free
Trying to prove that the world was round
Encountering many a sacred ground
Right or wrong it is for one to digest
Today's Reasons for Columbus conquest
`Janie/mjfb1954`
©82011*
~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~
The Santa Maria (Ship Of Columbus)
Vote for this poem
BIOGRAPHY~CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS~
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