Yes. Sorry about that. He was sponsored by the Spanish

Vikings are Europeans. Just a technicality, but still, we are called Northern Europe here in Scandanivia Otherwise you are right

Who isn't? Better yet, so what? Different times. Different values.

I was schooled in the US Midwest region, 40 years ago, before besmirching people became the hip thing to do. Again, hate and despise him all you like. I'm not drinking that Kool-Aid.

Another excuse to get drunk.

I never know what to think about this colonisation thing, since I'm from the UK which must be one of the most colonised and invaded countries going: not that I feel especially resentful about it, not even the Danes who nicked a huge segment of what is now England and are apparently responsible for my accent. In fact the only ones I really resent are the Romans. Bloody Romans, what did they ever do for us?

I'm probably descended from most of them anyway, as well as the indigenous types who apparently far from buggering off pretty much stayed put, or at least that's the current thinking. I think they resigned themselves to vaguely wondering who currently owned the swamp in question (since I'm from Jarrow).

Basically any historical hero had something evil or dark about them. Margaret Sanger, the greatest American woman who started planned parenthood wanted to exterminate black people and put a majority of planned parenthood clinics in black neighborhoods to thin the population, yet America has a Margaret Sanger award that goes to people who do things for women's rights, like Hillary Clinton was awarded one. They actually celebrate Margaret Sanger as a hero still even though she has a dark past, I don't see the social justice warriors attacking Margaret Sanger.


Most of the feminist movement from the 60s were full of eugenicists who believed mentally or physically defected people should either be sterilized or exterminated for the good of humanity. Nellie mclung here in Canada was one such woman, and Canada is voting to put her on a Canadian bill.


Tommy Douglas (keifer Sutherland's ancestors) is regarded by liberal Canadians as the greatest Canadian, and he was also a eugenicist that wanted to actively exterminate mentally handicapped people, as was his hypothesis in his essays he wrote.


Hell even ghandi was a sixual deviant that abused women.

I'm with Quirky on this one. I am so not for besmirching every historical figure that is European or American. It's dumb.


And I'll also defend whoever I like.

Going by this thread....yea, I think. O_o

Anyway, I didn't even know people celebrated Columbus day....

Don't forget the [censored]. Lots and lots of [censored]. (whoops.. uh.. atrocious sixual acts then)

It's just another one of those lies they teach you in elementary school here in the United States. So aside from K-6 grade I don't think it's really celebrated.

Edit: A lot of people in history are scum by today's standards though. I mean, look at Disney's romanticized version of John Smith where he wasn't a child molester (John Smith called her a child of like 10-13 years old or something).

From the first passage of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee:

'It began with Christopher Columbus, who gave the people the name Indios. Those Europeans, the white men, spoke in different dialects, and some pronounced the word Indien, or Indianer, or Indian. Peaux-rouges, or redskins, came later. As was the custom of the people when receiving strangers, the Tainos on the island of San Salvador generously presented Columbus and his men with gifts and treated them with honor.

"So tractable, so peaceable, are these people," Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain, "that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbors as themselves, and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy."

All this, of course, was taken as a sign of weakness, if not heathenism, and Columbus being a righteous European was convinced the people should be "made to work, sow and do all that is necessary and to adopt our ways."

Take from that what you will.

I second the motion to convert "Columbus Day" to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci#Expeditions

Just "discovering" something isn't good enough. We should celebrate those brave, ethnocentric and imperialistic explorers who not only explored for their sovereign and patron(s), but actually "got it right!"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci#Expeditions

Since we don't get the day off I consider it unimportant and just another day!

I imagine the USA celebrates Columbus Day in lieu of a patron saints day. Like St Georges in England, St Patricks in Ireland, St Davids in Wales and St Andrews in Scotland.

St David and St Patrick were ethnologically from the British Isles. St George and St Andrew were adopted as Patron Saints by Anglo Normans, at a pinch they could be described as our Columbus Days.

He wasn't a saint but he wasn't a monster either (by the standards of the time). Just compare him to people like Pizarro or Cortes and then you see what a real conquistador was like.

The Spanish record in the Americas was no worse than the English or French record, and nobody matches the US for breaking treaties. There was a lot of anti-Spanish propaganda spread by Protestant countries that forms the basis of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend that still affects many peoples view of the period.

I came to the realization many years ago that a LOT of what I was taught about history in U.S. public schools was flat-out inaccurate and/or quite incomplete. Some of it, I think, was just the result of an incomplete history curriculum, but some was almost certainly something akin to propaganda, sadly. That realization (again, many years ago) actually made me pretty angry.

I do sometimes wonder In 100 years when were all worm food, what they will think of us destructive, uneducated, barbarians...... Not often because well I am busy being a destructive, uneducated, Barbarian....

Edit- And then I think (cause I just can not leave it alone) Ahh the golden age the Renaissance..... when you could still plant a dagger in someones belly and leave em to bleed out on the street in a disagreement, and you kept your poo in a little vase under yer bed, till well in most places ya just dumped it out the window.......

Ohh prespective is one hell of a thing

I found that out a long time ago as well. Most of it is just propaganda to make the U.S sound like the best thing ever. It's interesting talking to people from other countries who were taught the same event but vastly different(Not hero worshiping U.S) from what we're taught here.

Lol, I can forgive you for the time period and location you were born in, but in this day and age, there's no excuse for clinging to these long-outdated beliefs. Besmirching historical figures has never been the "hip" thing to do; reporting the truth on historical figures has always been the right thing to do. When Nixon resigned and we started teaching our kids about Watergate, is that us drinking the kool-aid and disparaging a US President? Of course not, it's us reporting the truth. Same thing with Columbus. Just because someone was born a long time ago doesn't give them immunity to criticism.

Yeah, my public school experience regarding US history is “WE ARE THE BEST! WE ARE #1! WE ARE GREAT AT EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD BOW DOWN TO US AND FOLLOW US, AND WATCH US, AND WORSHIP THE GROUND WE WALK ON!!”


College and the internet has thankfully given me a nice dosage of reality. :] But at any rate, it's good to know that Columbus was a monster -- even if he did have some good qualities. He was a human, after all. A horrid human, to be sure, but still human. No one is immune to criticism, save for a small newborn, but that's it. I don't care if it's Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, or Montezuma. No one is spared any criticism they deserve.


Now to Columbus' credit, he did have a very clever idea: simply go west to reach India. He just didn't count on there being two gigantic friggin' landmasses in the way -- and no one could fault him for that. NO ONE knew they existed back in 1492. He did have a thirst for adventure and exploration, something we could all have (just, y'know, don't pillage, loot, torture, and otherwise humiliate and destroy everyone you come across, OK??)


It's OK to look at someone and aspire to be their good qualities while recognizing and refusing to be their bad. That's what he teaches, at least to me anyway. Be an explorer! Go out and do in real life what we always do in 'The Elder Scrolls' and 'Fallout'! Just be sure to treat anyone you meet with kindness and respect.

Should really be leif Erikson day, but we Scandis are too chill to care.

^ There's a lesson in there somewhere...

This. 100% this! I was coming to this realization in high school actually. It was actually a teacher that started opening my eyes to this. He would teach us the lesson required and then with what time he had left would tell us what was actually documented as opposed to the inaccurate, watered down crap in the books the state got.

Well if you follow the whole Templars going to North America theory that's coming about, it's theorized that he already knew about those land masses because of his wife. She was Dona Felipa Perestrello e Moniz. She was a granddaughter – on her mothers side – of Gil Moniz a Knight of Christ , and daughter of the Genoese explorer Bartolomero Perestrello, also a Knight of Christ.

Bartolomeo Perestrello also had a son. This son, also called Bartolemeo Perestrello, married Guimar Teixeira, the aunt of Tristao vaz Teixeira, who was the first husband of Catrina vaz de Lordelo. Catrina latter married John Drummond, so of Elizabeth Sinclair, a daughter of Henry Sinclair. Henry Sinclair's Grandfather was William Sinclair who by legend had already explored Greenland and North America 100 years before Columbus.

Is this true? I dont know but it's a lot of strange connections that led Columbus to fame.

Really! What are we supposed teach "kids", anyway?

Hipster Teacher: "Yea. This guy here? He was a child raypist and a genocidal murderer."

7-Year-Old Student: "Teacher? What is a ray-pist?"

I find a couple things unfair about this.

First, we are judging the actions taken by a man 500 years ago to the standards of today. That is inherently unfair. He was no different from most of the European explorers of his time, they explored to find riches, not expand knowledge, and slaves were just that.

Second, what we were taught of him in school came from historians, the same group of people now condemning him. So they were wrong then but are correct now? In 50 years is the story going to change again?

"History is written by the winners.", some person wiser than I once said