I had to work the holiday to celebrate the arrival of Cristoforo Colombo (later made Spanish into Cristobal Colon and then further Westernized into Christopher Columbus) in the 'New World' some 520 years ago. It would've been nice to have an additional day in Atlanta, where I spent my weekend and hell, everybody likes an extra day off. But the truth of the matter is Columbus (like many people in history) gets more credit than he deserves. Did it take balls to leave your home country and ask rival countries to get support to finance his insatiable thirst of exploration? Of course. It took even bigger balls to go out and do it. Kudos to him for that. BUT, his credit stops there for several reasons: 1) He was not the first person from another continent to land there, Chinese explorers, African explorers, and possibly others beat him to North and South America; which was also inhabited by Natives anyway. It's nice how history tends to take your side when your sponsors have more map makers and book writers than the competition 2) Dude missed his target (India) by 8000 miles and somehow couldn't figure that out. I know navigation wasn't what it is today but that was a significantly shorter trip. If I didn't use GPS or maps but planned on driving to California and got there in 12 hours, I'd know I was somewhere other than my destination. Wanna know why it's called America and not "Columbus Land"?? Because Amerigo Vespucci could figure out that he was in The New World instead of India and Columbus was running around calling Native Americans "Indians." Plus we all know the gruesome process of colonization that Columbus essentially pioneered in this part of the world; there came to be a practical 10 step manual --1) Befriend Natives on arrival, 2) Exploit Natives for all useful knowledge (farming, hunting, climate, geography, resources, etc), 3) Kill strongest members of Native culture, 4) Kill children who seem to have capability of growing into future threats, 5) Enslave remaining women and children, 6) Rape Native women therefore passing Euro-based STDs globally, 7) Burn and pillage Native villages, 8) Denounce Native traditions and religions, 9) Oppress Native people with white superiority logic, 10) Take credit for all knowledge gained (which will make it into future History textbooks) and call Native people "Savages." Although Columbus wasn't as heavily involved in all 10 of these steps as other Conquistadors (Hello, Henan Cortez), his hands were dirty enough to be disliked for his involvement. But hey, the spoils go to the victors when it comes to tell the stories of history. So I'd take Columbus Day as another excuse to miss work if I got the option, but I'm not sucking him off like everyone else. Stop Me When I Start Lying...
Read up if you don't know:
http://rense.com/general43/before.htm
http://wn.com/1421_the_year_china_discovered_america?_%7B1_of_8%7D
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