4 Facts About Christopher Columbus
Students across the United States get to enjoy a day off school Monday in honor of the famed and mythical Renaissance Era explorer.
Columbus Day, an annual federal holiday named after Christopher Columbus, is a holiday that invokes ethnic pride for some and shameful historical memories for others.
Some, especially many in the Italian-American community, see it as a day of celebration honoring one of their most famous countrymen.
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Others, including many in the Native American community, view Columbus as the propagator of ethnic genocide and unworthy of having his own special day.
Here are four facts about the man and the holiday, including the dispelling of a popular myth about Columbus' accomplishments.
1. Columbus Did NOT Prove the World Was Round
Quite possibly the most commonly believed historical myth in the United States, if not the world, it has long been claimed that Columbus proved to a skeptical European audience that the Earth was indeed round.
Popular culture has embraced this imagery for everything from movies to television commercials. Its wide acceptance does not make it true, however, as noted by Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post in 2011.
"Historians say there is no doubt that the educated in Columbus's day knew quite well that the Earth was not flat but round. In fact, this was known many centuries earlier," wrote Strauss.
"Several books published in Europe between 1200 and 1500 discussed the Earth's shape, including 'The Sphere,' written in the early 1200s, which was required reading in European universities in the 1300s and beyond. It was still in use 500 years after it was penned."
The myth of Columbus proving the Earth was round came from the writings of famed 19th century American writer Washington Irving.
2. Columbus Was NOT the First to Discover America
Another commonly believed yet ultimately false claim is that in 1492 Columbus not only sailed the ocean blue but also discovered America.
Columbus was hardly the first person to reach the area. Human beings had inhabited the Americas since at least the Ice Age.
Columbus was also not the first European to reach the Americas either. Viking sailors made landfall in North America during the Medieval Era, centuries before the Italian explorer was born.
Besides that, wrote Christopher Wanjek of Live Science, Columbus never yet got to the very shores of the very land that became the nation that celebrated his discoveries.
"What Columbus 'discovered' was the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic," wrote Wanjek.
"On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States."
A better description would be that Columbus discovered parts of the lands located in the western hemisphere previously unknown to several European nations.
3. Columbus Day Was NOT a National Holiday Until the 20th Century
Although Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492, and made other journeys for a few years after that, his exploits were not nationally celebrated in the United States until the 20th century.
Italian and Catholic communities and organizations had offered sporadic observances going at least as far back as 1792 and in 1892, and President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation calling for Americans to remember Columbus.
"In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely as a result of intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic fraternal benefits organization. Originally observed every Oct. 12, it was fixed to the second Monday in October in 1971," according to history.com.
4. Columbus Day Is NOT Always Called 'Columbus Day' in the Modern U.S.
While schools and governments across these U.S. take a day off on the second Monday of October each year, they do not always do so in honor of Columbus.
Since the 1970s, a movement has existed to replace the name Columbus from the holiday due to the explorer's well documented mistreatment of Native American tribes that he encountered.
Last year, Seattle City Council garnered headlines for its unanimous decision to observe "Indigenous Peoples Day" instead of Columbus Day.
"Seattle City Council unanimously voted to recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day as an alternative to Columbus Day, following in the footsteps of Minneapolis, which made the same decision in April of this year," reported Nolan Feeney of Time in 2014.
"But both cities were late to the game compared to Berkeley, California, which in 1992 became the first city in the country to formally recognize a new holiday challenging the idea that Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America with his 1492 voyage."
Some states, including South Dakota, have opted for "Native Americans Day" as a replacement for Columbus Day.
