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Trump Decides Cristobol Columbus Needs A Reach Around (The World).


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Posted
26 minutes ago, ROFL BOX said:

We love the Italians, don't we?  Nobody loves the Italians like me.

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/11/nx-s1-5570093/columbus-day-trump-proclamation

In his proclamation, Trump accuses "left-wing arsonists" of trying to "destroy [Columbus'] name and dishonor his memory."

 

How Columbus Sailed Into U.S. History, Thanks To Italians

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In reality, Christopher Columbus never stepped foot on the North American Mainland. (The Viking from Iceland Leif Erikson is believed to though, about 500 years earlier)

Christopher Columbus never "discovered" anything that didn't already contain people who found it first. 

Christopher Columbus never "proved" the world was round in his voyages. During the time before his first voyage, the round Earth theory was already gaining popularity as well.

Christopher Columbus never realized the Central and South American Coasts were those a new continent- believing them to be part of Asia until his death.

The ships Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were actually named la Santa Clara, la Pinta, and la Santa Gallega. The other names commonly known by people were nicknames.

As Governor he was especially cruel to the Native Populations of the Indies, cutting off their hands for not paying his taxes, executing, and raping others. His cruelty even extended to the Spanish Colonists and in 1499 he was arrested by the Spanish Government for crimes against them, taken back to Spain and stripped of his titles.

The first English colony in North America wasn't established until 1607. Well over 100 years after Columbus's first voyage to the West Indies. He had practically zero impact on the development or origins of the United States. 

History is too interesting, and too many lessons can be learned from it to spread false narratives about it. Changing the names of holidays and celebrations because we have a better understanding of history isn't "erasing history" either- it's celebrating real history.

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His feats of navigation were fairly incredible, considering he made four trips back in forth in ships that were 50-70 feet long and he sailed by the stars and dead-reckoning. 

His first voyage took two months across unknown seas, so yeah, it was impressive.

It's difficult to judge someone from antiquity by our standards. Spain was emerging from 800 years of Moorish rule. Much of it was brutal and it shaped their world-view. The cruelty he exhibited was fairly standard for the times. Anyone who loves history, and I assume you do, knows humans kinda suck.  

And his discoveries laid the path for development of the New World, so yes, he had a huge impact on the eventual forming of the United States. 

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Posted
2 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

His feats of navigation were fairly incredible, considering he made four trips back in forth in ships that were 50-70 feet long and he sailed by the stars and dead-reckoning. 

His first voyage took two months across unknown seas, so yeah, it was impressive.

It's difficult to judge someone from antiquity by our standards. Spain was emerging from 800 years of Moorish rule. Much of it was brutal and it shaped their world-view. The cruelty he exhibited was fairly standard for the times. Anyone who loves history, and I assume you do, knows humans kinda suck.  

And his discoveries laid the path for development of the New World, so yes, he had a huge impact on the eventual forming of the United States. 

OK, let's judge him by the standards of the time. Bartolomé de las Casas wrote plenty about how he was a dick.

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Posted
2 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

His feats of navigation were fairly incredible, considering he made four trips back in forth in ships that were 50-70 feet long and he sailed by the stars and dead-reckoning. 

His first voyage took two months across unknown seas, so yeah, it was impressive.

It's difficult to judge someone from antiquity by our standards. Spain was emerging from 800 years of Moorish rule. Much of it was brutal and it shaped their world-view. The cruelty he exhibited was fairly standard for the times. Anyone who loves history, and I assume you do, knows humans kinda suck.  

And his discoveries laid the path for development of the New World, so yes, he had a huge impact on the eventual forming of the United States. 

And the social foundation Latin America. 

BTW, his "castle" in Santo Domingo reminds you how damn short people were. 

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Posted (edited)
56 minutes ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

OK, let's judge him by the standards of the time. Bartolomé de las Casas wrote plenty about how he was a dick.

I'm sure he was a total dick. Many an amazing feat was accomplished and/or created by people who were total fucking dicks, cause sometimes, that what it takes.

Joseph Heller wrote my favorite book, Catch 22, and pretty everyone said he was a total dick.

Heck, Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts,  was supposedly a total fucking dick.    

Edited by TreatyOak
Posted
I'm sure he was a total dick. Many an amazing feat was accomplished and/or created by people who were total fucking dicks, cause sometimes, that what it takes.   
I was waiting for the finishing touch of "Hitler had spiffy uniforms & kept the trains running on time" thing.

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Posted
8 hours ago, ROFL BOX said:

I was waiting for the finishing touch of "Hitler had spiffy uniforms & kept the trains running on time" thing.

Say what you want about the Nazis, but Hugo Boss was the bomb.* 

* I looked it up. Apparently, Hugo Boss didn't design the uniforms, as commonly believed, but happily produced them. 

Posted
10 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

 

Heck, Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts,  was supposedly a total fucking dick.    

 

10 hours ago, F250 said:

excuse me what GIFwill ferrell GIF


The correct answer was:

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Posted
17 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

His feats of navigation were fairly incredible, considering he made four trips back in forth in ships that were 50-70 feet long and he sailed by the stars and dead-reckoning. 

As someone who regularly navigates the ocean by sailing vessel, I'm going to disagree with your detective work there Lou.

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Posted (edited)
17 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

His feats of navigation were fairly incredible, considering he made four trips back in forth in ships that were 50-70 feet long and he sailed by the stars and dead-reckoning. 

His first voyage took two months across unknown seas, so yeah, it was impressive.

It's difficult to judge someone from antiquity by our standards. Spain was emerging from 800 years of Moorish rule. Much of it was brutal and it shaped their world-view. The cruelty he exhibited was fairly standard for the times. Anyone who loves history, and I assume you do, knows humans kinda suck.  

And his discoveries laid the path for development of the New World, so yes, he had a huge impact on the eventual forming of the United States. 

The courage to sail into the sunset and keep sailing cannot be overstated. Nor can the scale of catastrophe visited upon the existing civilization by the invasion of Europeans.

I've come around on the celebration of Columbus and discovering the "New" World. The contact led to unfathomable death and sorrow and destruction. He personifies that. I don't care that he thought he was landing in Asia or wasn't actually the first European here. His achievement stands just as do the consequences. 

I'm with the descendants of the indigenous who think the whole thing should not be celebrated. I doubted their claim for years.

Read 1491, 1493, and an Indigenous People's History of the United States. Or try to befor they're banned, collected, and burned to protect the feelings of the downtrodden white man.

Edited by RomaVicta
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Posted
13 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

I'm sure he was a total dick. Many an amazing feat was accomplished and/or created by people who were total fucking dicks, cause sometimes, that what it takes.

Joseph Heller wrote my favorite book, Catch 22, and pretty everyone said he was a total dick.

Heck, Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts,  was supposedly a total fucking dick.    

Ok you are right, we should take away their Federal holidays, and statues of them on public grounds. 

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Posted
19 minutes ago, bolverk said:

What the Polynesians did to populate islands across the Pacific with far less developed technology, including Hawaii and several US overseas territories, is a far more impressive feat, imo. European "discovery" of the Americas was pretty much inevitable with the ships they had and navigation tools like compasses, astrolabes, and quadrants.

Let's celebrate these crazy fuckers:

undefined

100%

Posted
30 minutes ago, bolverk said:

What the Polynesians did to populate islands across the Pacific with far less developed technology, including Hawaii and several US overseas territories, is a far more impressive feat, imo. European "discovery" of the Americas was pretty much inevitable with the ships they had and navigation tools like compasses, astrolabes, and quadrants.

Let's celebrate these crazy fuckers:

undefined

Can you recommend some good reading on this? I'm pretty fascinated but know very little. They may have made it to South America. That's a vast bit of ocean with few islands.

Posted
Just now, RomaVicta said:

Can you recommend some good reading on this? I'm pretty fascinated but know very little. They may have made it to South America. That's a vast bit of ocean with few islands.

Sadly, no; I really don't. Most of what I know (or think I know) is only from documentaries and such over the last few years, which made me actually contemplate what they did and feel an awakening to amazement at their achievements. Hopefully, some other, more erudite Surlier can guide you.

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Posted

Columbus Day's origin as a federal holiday is an interesting story about our country's apparently continuous cycle of hating immigrants, killing immigrants, later finding some figurehead to honor "one of the good ones" of that immigrant group to appease the immigrants that were being hated on (and then progress . . . on to find the next group we can hate).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/10/10/columbus-day-benjamin-harrison-mob-italians/

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Posted
9 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Can you recommend some good reading on this? I'm pretty fascinated but know very little. They may have made it to South America. That's a vast bit of ocean with few islands.

Patrick Kirch has done several books, he specializes in Polynesian archaeology. 

 

 

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Posted
32 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Can you recommend some good reading on this? I'm pretty fascinated but know very little. They may have made it to South America. That's a vast bit of ocean with few islands.

I learned from the hawaii revealed series that polynesians would each year follow bird migration to the point where the birds were no longer visible. They would then return to their island, the following year, they would row to the point where they lost sight of the birds, wait for the birds to arrive again, qnd follow them again until they lost sight of them. They would continue this for years and years and years. Simply astounding.

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Posted
3 hours ago, G650 said:

As someone who regularly navigates the ocean by sailing vessel, I'm going to disagree with your detective work there Lou.

Perhaps you should explain your theory instead of just disagreeing. Yeah, he kinda used the stars and dead reckoning: 

"According to Columbus' logs, he mainly used dead reckoning navigation. Dead reckoning was a method in which the navigator would measure the distance and course from a specific point, such as the port."

Posted
3 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

Perhaps you should explain your theory instead of just disagreeing. Yeah, he kinda used the stars and dead reckoning: 

"According to Columbus' logs, he mainly used dead reckoning navigation. Dead reckoning was a method in which the navigator would measure the distance and course from a specific point, such as the port."

 

Yeah I'm aware of what dead reckoning is, you learn it in beginning navigation course when you are like 12 years old. It's the all else fails option.

 

There's a reason we call them the trade winds, and why they ended up in the Caribbean. He didn't really navigate much of anything, he just got blown there and home by default. There was not any precision navigation going on here, use a compass and vaguely wonder in that direction and that's about it.

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Posted
3 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

It's a good thing we don't need to do that, given that he was dragged back to Spain and imprisoned for various crimes against humanity that the fucking Spanish crown thought was a bit too much. 

Being that it was good 'ole Spain, I bet the crown was far more upset about the corruption charges (not getting their cut) than the cruelty charges. Plus, he had many jealous rivals who wanted to take over his position and gains. Regardless, he was pardoned and the king permitted him to fund his final expedition to the New World. 

And while the Spanish conquest was cruel, so were the indigenous peoples they conquered, as evidenced that it took Cortez around 15 minutes to gather lots of tribes to fight the Aztecs, who were pretty awful themselves. 

Posted
Just now, G650 said:

 

Yeah I'm aware of what dead reckoning is, you learn it in beginning navigation course when you are like 12 years old. It's the all else fails option.

 

There's a reason we call them the trade winds, and why they ended up in the Caribbean. He didn't really navigate much of anything, he just got blown there and home by default. There was not any precision navigation going on here, use a compass and vaguely wonder in that direction and that's about it.

Many tried before him and none came back. He was the first to succeed, and he did it four times, so yes, it was an incredible achievement in its day.  

Posted
1 minute ago, TreatyOak said:

Many tried before him and none came back. He was the first to succeed, and he did it four times, so yes, it was an incredible achievement in its day.  

Well Leif Erikson did, but you are pointing out exactly what I'm saying. His accomplishment wasn't navigating, it was staying alive that long. And that was not as impressive as the Polynesians who crossed much bigger expanses of ocean long before Columbus was a twinkle in his momma's eye.

Posted
4 minutes ago, G650 said:

Well Leif Erikson did, but you are pointing out exactly what I'm saying. His accomplishment wasn't navigating, it was staying alive that long. And that was not as impressive as the Polynesians who crossed much bigger expanses of ocean long before Columbus was a twinkle in his momma's eye.

 

Sure those things are very impressive, but they don't negate what Columbus accomplished in any way and neither had 1/millionth of the impact that his voyages achieved.  

But sounds like you're ready to play the popular game here on Surly: 

Lets-Move-the-Goal-Posts.jpg

 

Posted
Just now, TreatyOak said:

 

Sure those things are very impressive, but they don't negate what Columbus accomplished in any way and neither had 1/millionth of the impact that his voyages achieved.  

But sounds like you're ready to play the popular game here on Surly: 

Lets-Move-the-Goal-Posts.jpg

 

 

I'm not moving anything, I'm framing what Columbus did in a proper manner. If he didn't land here some other euro would have stumblefucked his way over at some point. He's just not as consequential as you want him to be.

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Posted (edited)

I always thought Vespucci was a cooler guido than Columbus. So goddam cool we named two continents after him (if my 4th grade teachers weren't lying to me).

Edited by safe sex
Posted

The Christopher Columbus story is very interesting and his voyage to America was absolutely world-changing. I'm fine with having a day named after him, but it also should be required for all schools to tell his story exactly as it happened, including the rape, enslavement, severed hands for not finding gold on an island that didn't have any gold, mass suicides, testing the sharpness of swords on people, the plot to get enough gold to convince the Mongol horde to conquer Jerusalem and bring about the end times, and how he was too stupid to figure out that he had never been to Asia until the day he died.

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Posted
1 hour ago, safe sex said:

I always thought Vespucci was a cooler guido than Columbus. So goddam cool we named two continents after him (if my 4th grade teachers weren't lying to me).

What's really funny about the name Amerigo is that it's a cognate of the name Emmerich, from Proto-Germanic *Haimariks, which co-evolved with the name Heinrich, which became Henri in French, and then eventually Henry in English.

Since America is the feminine version, it'd literally be Henrietta, and therefore, we live in the United States of Henrietta. Love, love, love that factoid.

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Posted
1 hour ago, G650 said:

 

I'm not moving anything, I'm framing what Columbus did in a proper manner. If he didn't land here some other euro would have stumblefucked his way over at some point. He's just not as consequential as you want him to be.

“…some other euro would have…”

But they didn’t. He did. You can’t give others credit for something they didn’t do.
Hence, he receives and deserves the accolades. 

I personally don’t care about the political discussion here either way. As a history lover, I was responding to the posters who are trying to negate his achievements, which were extraordinary for their day, and kicked off a golden age of exploration, because of today’s conventional wisdom.

The fact that he was brutal by our standards doesn’t negate his achievements, just as the brutality, human sacrifice and cannibalism of the  Polynesians and brutal raiding culture of the Vikings doesn’t negate their achievements. 

i leave you with this actual funny quote from one of Pizzaro’s captains about why they came to conquer the Incas. “We came to spread light into the darkness. And to get rich.”

Posted
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

What's really funny about the name Amerigo is that it's a cognate of the name Emmerich, from Proto-Germanic *Haimariks, which co-evolved with the name Heinrich, which became Henri in French, and then eventually Henry in English.

Since America is the feminine version, it'd literally be Henrietta, and therefore, we live in the United States of Henrietta. Love, love, love that factoid.

I fuckin' knew this country was trans. I knew it

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Posted
32 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

“…some other euro would have…”

But they didn’t. He did. You can’t give others credit for something they didn’t do.
Hence, he receives and deserves the accolades. 

I personally don’t care about the political discussion here either way. As a history lover, I was responding to the posters who are trying to negate his achievements, which were extraordinary for their day, and kicked off a golden age of exploration, because of today’s conventional wisdom.

The fact that he was brutal by our standards doesn’t negate his achievements, just as the brutality, human sacrifice and cannibalism of the  Polynesians and brutal raiding culture of the Vikings doesn’t negate their achievements. 

i leave you with this actual funny quote from one of Pizzaro’s captains about why they came to conquer the Incas. “We came to spread light into the darkness. And to get rich.”

 

I'm not making a political discussion either, or saying what he did did not have far reaching consequences for us all, I'm saying he didn't really have achievements, he had dumb luck and doesn't deserve accolades for sailing to the wrong fucking continent. And that's fine. We can acknowledge he was consequential without making up shit like he was particularly skilled, because he wasn't.

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Posted (edited)
36 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

“…some other euro would have…”

But they didn’t. He did. You can’t give others credit for something they didn’t do.
Hence, he receives and deserves the accolades. 

I personally don’t care about the political discussion here either way. As a history lover, I was responding to the posters who are trying to negate his achievements, which were extraordinary for their day, and kicked off a golden age of exploration, because of today’s conventional wisdom.

The fact that he was brutal by our standards doesn’t negate his achievements, just as the brutality, human sacrifice and cannibalism of the  Polynesians and brutal raiding culture of the Vikings doesn’t negate their achievements. 

i leave you with this actual funny quote from one of Pizzaro’s captains about why they came to conquer the Incas. “We came to spread light into the darkness. And to get rich.”

I agree with all this, but he was particularly brutal for his time, too, and that should be part of any curriculum that covers him. My school basically taught that the whole world outside of Columbus believed the world was flat and that Columbus, while being smarter than everyone else, was simply wrong about the world being a lot bigger than he believed it to be. He had a happy little voyage to America with three ships and then returned to Spain a hero. Then the pilgrims came.

Edited by The Hot Dog Buffet
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Posted

I read the diary of Bernal Diaz years ago. He was a soldier of Cortez in Mexico. He discovers the horror of human sacrifice and, I think it's him, casually menitons the Inquisiiton which the Spanish brought to the New World. Diaz was awed by the cities and noted they were bigger, cleaner, and more orderly than any he had seen in Europe. He had no explanation for motives, but he repeats that gold is an honorable objective. 

Such a clash of civilizations. Savagery in both. (Aztecs and Spanish. I don't mean to put all indigenous people in the same pot.) Culture in both.

So much was wiped out. The Spanish destroyed the libraries of the savages. The natives died in droves to disease.

Europe invaded a civilized land, and did all they could to erase every aspect of those civilizations from the earth and memory. 

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Posted
6 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Can you recommend some good reading on this?

No book, however maybe a 2 part documentary series?

 

Moana.jpeg

Moana_2_poster.jpg

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Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, bolverk said:

What the Polynesians did to populate islands across the Pacific with far less developed technology, including Hawaii and several US overseas territories, is a far more impressive feat, imo. European "discovery" of the Americas was pretty much inevitable with the ships they had and navigation tools like compasses, astrolabes, and quadrants.

Let's celebrate these crazy fuckers:

undefined

 

6 hours ago, G650 said:

100%


These guys were crazy, you say?

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7 minutes ago, ROFL BOX said:

No book, however maybe a 2 part documentary series?

 

Moana.jpeg

Moana_2_poster.jpg


I much prefer the adult versions of the stories myself…

Moan-ana

and the sequel, 

Moan-ana: Haka Tua 

Edited by Dnaguy
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Posted
22 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I read the diary of Bernal Diaz years ago. He was a soldier of Cortez in Mexico. He discovers the horror of human sacrifice and, I think it's him, casually menitons the Inquisiiton which the Spanish brought to the New World. Diaz was awed by the cities and noted they were bigger, cleaner, and more orderly than any he had seen in Europe. He had no explanation for motives, but he repeats that gold is an honorable objective. 

Such a clash of civilizations. Savagery in both. (Aztecs and Spanish. I don't mean to put all indigenous people in the same pot.) Culture in both.

So much was wiped out. The Spanish destroyed the libraries of the savages. The natives died in droves to disease.

Europe invaded a civilized land, and did all they could to erase every aspect of those civilizations from the earth and memory. 

Might is Right. 

or

 

Posted
6 hours ago, bolverk said:

Sadly, no; I really don't. Most of what I know (or think I know) is only from documentaries and such over the last few years, which made me actually contemplate what they did and feel an awakening to amazement at their achievements. Hopefully, some other, more erudite Surlier can guide you.

Paul Theroux, Paddling the Happy Isles of Oceania

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Posted

It’s debatable when the Europeans would have sailed to the Americas again if Columbus didn’t.  Columbus miscalculated two things: the circumference of the world (undershot) and the size of Asia (overshot). Had they got the correct numbers (and he was debated at the time while astronomy and calculation was getting better), the idea of a Western passage would have possibly been abandoned. 

They didn’t know another continent was there and would have assumed it was impossible given the technology of the time. Eventually yes but the timeline could have shifted over a century easily.  There was no historical memory of Ericsson. 

 

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