Over 16,513,667 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?

as found on: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1235290.htm Columbus and America The school kid rhyme runs, "In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue". That much is true. The rest of it - that he discovered North America, that he was trying to prove that the Earth was round, and that Queen Isabella pawned her jewels - it's all false. If you want to get really picky, North America had been previously "discovered" some 20,000 years earlier. Even so, the sailor, Christopher Columbus, was not the first European to "encounter" North America. That honour popularly belongs to Leif Ericsson, and his Scandinavian colleagues, around 1000 AD. But more to the point, Columbus never actually set foot in North America. Christopher Columbus headed west across the Atlantic Ocean pushed by many forces. They included fear of both Islam and Portugal, the lust for gold and adventure and of course, the desire for lucrative spices (which were used as medicines, and for flavouring and preserving food). But the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic states made getting to the East for spices very difficult, whether you went by land or by sea. However, there was the long-discussed "long way around the world" to the East, by going to the West. All the astronomers, astrologers and master mariners knew that the Earth was a sphere. After all, when a ship came over the horizon, you saw the tip of the mast first, and the hull last - exactly what you would expect with a spherical planet. Indeed, way back around 250 BC, the Greek poet, astronomer and scientist, Eratosthenes, had measured the circumference of the Earth accurate to about 10%. In the early 7th century in Spain, the erudite St. Isidore of Sevilla had published one of the first encyclopaediae, and in it, he wrote that the Earth was spherical. As a result, educated Europeans were quite aware that the Earth was a ball. Columbus was also familiar with the calculations of the 2nd century AD scientist, Ptolemy, who had discussed travelling to China overland. Columbus had also read the travels of Marco Polo in the 13th and 14th centuries. Columbus was convinced that both Ptolemy and Marco Polo could be read to mean that China stretched a really long way around the back of the Earth - so that a determined navigator could travel to China in the East, by instead going West.Columbus mounted four journeys, none of which reached North America. His first journey of 1492 was funded by a consortium of himself, bankers, and the king and queen of Spain. (No, Queen Isabella did not have to pawn her jewels. That particular myth was started by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a 16th century Spanish historian.) In his first journey, Columbus visited San Salvador in the Bahamas (which he was convinced was Japan), Cuba (which he thought was China) and Haiti (where he found gold). His second journey (1493) was far better funded - possibly because his first expedition brought back gold, spices, parrots and human captives. He set off with at least 17 ships, holding cavalry, some 200 private investors and some 1,300 salaried men. He again visited Haiti (he called it Hispaniola, and was convinced it was the biblical land of Sheba) and explored more of Cuba. His third expedition left with six ships in 1498. He explored southwards, and set foot in Venezuela (which he was convinced was the temperate lowlands of an "Earthly Paradise".) His fourth expedition of 1502 had four ships. He visited Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. He was forced to beach his remaining two ships in Jamaica, and was castaway for a year. During that time, he did correctly predict an eclipse of the Moon to impress the locals, thus convincing them to provide him with food. Today, Americans celebrate "Columbus Day" on the second Monday in October, to remember the landing of Columbus in the New World on October 12, 1492. In reality, he never set foot in North America. The closest he got was to land on the island of San Salvador, in the Bahamas. So first, Columbus did not ever land in North America. Second, Columbus was not sailing across the Atlantic to prove that the world was round - all the educated people knew that it was round. No, Columbus was trying to find a better trade route to bring back lucrative spices from Asia. And to the end of his days, he was convinced that he had sailed to the Indies and China.
Leave a comment!
html comments NOT enabled!
NOTE: If you post content that is offensive, adult, or NSFW (Not Safe For Work), your account will be deleted.[?]

giphy icon
last post
17 years ago
posts
47
views
11,122
can view
everyone
can comment
everyone
atom/rss

other blogs by this author

 17 years ago
You too many mind..
official fubar blogs
 8 years ago
fubar news by babyjesus  
 13 years ago
fubar.com ideas! by babyjesus  
 10 years ago
fubar'd Official Wishli... by SCRAPPER  
 10 years ago
Word of Esix by esixfiddy  

discover blogs on fubar

blog.php' rendered in 0.0483 seconds on machine '6'.