Today is Columbus Day

Today, October 14, 2024, is Columbus Day. It is a federal and state holiday celebrating the achievements of the great Italian Admiral Christopher Columbus. Columbus, who was born in Genoa, Italy, is celebrated for his 1492 discovery of the Americas on behalf of the Spanish crown. Courthouses, banks, government offices, most schools, and some businesses are closed today in honor of Columbus and his discovery of North and South America.

Sometimes Columbus is credited with proving that the Earth is round and not flat. This is incorrect. The ancient Greeks were the first to come to the conclusion that the Earth was round and by the 15th century it was widely accepted that the planet was round. All you have to do to observe that the Earth is round is sit on the beach and watch a tall sailing ship sail away and watch the sails disappear over the horizon to see the curvature of the Earth. The mistake that the best minds on the globe in the 15th Century were making was assuming that there was nothing but ocean between Europe and China. Nobody sailed due west from Spain - not because they thought they would fall off the edge of a flat Earth; but because they believed that they would run out of food and fresh water long before they reached land.

Columbus was convinced that the scholars were wrong about the circumference of the Earth. Actually, they were right, and he was wrong on that. The Italian sailor believed that a voyage to the west would take the mariner to India and China. This is why when he arrived in the Bahamas, he wrongly identified the people he met there as "Indians." Finding a maritime path to India and China was important for Europe because they traded with Europe via a land route that went through Muslim countries. Since the Muslims and the Christians were often in a perpetual war, that land route, called "the Silk Road," could be cut off. The Greeks at Byzantium had long guarded the eastern flank of Christendom from the demands of Muslem princes and warlords; but their empire - which had lasted for over a thousand years - was in the process of falling to the Ottoman Turks during Columbus's life so finding a sea route to the Orient was hugely important.

The Viking explorer Leif Erikson had made the voyage all the way to North America via Iceland and Greenland and Vikings even lived briefly in Newfoundland back in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the native Algonquin peoples of modern Canada - perhaps correctly identified the Vikings as a menace and so fiercely pushed back against the Vikings efforts to colonize North America. The Vikings' permanent settlement in Greenland died in the frigid temperatures of the 14th century (the coldest the Earth has been since the last Ice Age). There is no evidence that Columbus every heard of the Viking's voyages - and if he had he likely would have used Iceland as the staging point for his voyage instead of Spain.

Columbus relied on favorable "trade winds" that took ships westward across the Atlantic, correctly surmising that those winds would carry him at a favorable speed.

The proposal had been rejected by the Portuguese, and an effort to present it to England failed when Columbus's brother was captured by pirates. The newly united Spanish crown was finishing off a six-century effort to reconquer all of its lands from the Muslims who had invaded in the eighth century.

The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella were intrigued by Columbus and his persistence so agreed to fund the bold expedition, even though most of their advisors said that the mission was folly.

Columbus left Spain on August 3, 1492. He had three ships – the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

The voyage only took five weeks; but by then many of the sailors on board had given up hope and were convinced that they were sailing to their dooms.

On October 7, Columbus and his crew spotted large flocks of birds. This was hugely important because even the strongest of birds can't fly for thousands of miles. They knew that the birds needed to land to rest, so they were close to a coast. Finally, they reached the Bahamas on October 12, 1492.

Columbus named the islands San Salvador. Columbus would sail on to also discovered Cuba and Haiti.

Columbus returned to Spain triumphant with Arawak Indians, strange animals, and new foodstuffs; but he had failed to make contact with the Indian court - or even anybody who had every heard of India or China. Undeterred, Columbus took three more voyages, discovering many more lands, including South American and Central America.

He was always convinced that the coast of India was around the next bend. His critics in Spain, correctly understood that whatever lands Columbus was discovering they were not India and began to have real problems with the very generous terms that Ferdinand and Isabella had promised to the Italian Admiral and his heirs. Those terms would have made the Columbus family not only the most powerful Spanish noble, but one of the wealthiest in the world - surpassing the holdings of many European monarchs at the time. The holdings he had claimed for Spain were far larger than Spain itself. Many of the most powerful houses in Spain soon resented that a commoner from Italy would be entrusted with estates many times larger than all of the other Spanish noble houses combined. Columbus was also betrayed by his own limitations. Columbus was a great ship captain and a master navigator, but he had not been born into the nobility so had no noble house with vassals he could trust. His skills as an administrator were nonexistent, so he delegated the rule of his new conquests to other - often lesser men, and their failings became his fault. The powerful Spanish Church viewed the newly conquered Native Americans as citizens of Spain and not as a human resource to exploit. This put Columbus at odds with the Church in a court, where Ferdinand and Isabella saw themselves as defenders of the Church.

Reports quickly made their way to the Spanish court of Columbus's men mistreating the Indians. The crown did not like the idea that Columbus and not they would be the ones awarding estates and contracts in the newly discovered territories. Columbus was arrested for mistreating the Indians and brought back to Spain in chains. He would never return to the Americas – ironically named for another explorer instead of after Columbus himself.

Columbus has been honored by generations of Americans for his voyages, and he is especially well-regarded by Italian Americans. The Knights of Columbus are named in his honor, as is the District of Columbia and the Nation of Columbia.

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