Columbus Day

     When I was young, Columbus Day celebrated the beginning of the founding of America.  Without the brave Italian, Christopher Columbus, who sought a passage to the Indies and the Spanish royalty who backed him, we would not have discovered the New World.  And our name, America, came from Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian, who first noticed that America may not have been the Indies and marked this discovery on a map.  Italian-Americans celebrated their culture and invited all to join in.  Parades were plentiful, and a town carnival was the place to be.  Everyone knew about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and how the name "Indians" came from Columbus believing he was in India.  And students could recite the rhyme, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue."  Most importantly, Christopher Columbus was a hero. 
     But now the name and legacy of Christopher Columbus, as with most Europeans, has been tarnished, and Amerigo Vespucci was nothing more than lucky.
     Most of the history taught in American schools today has switched from Eurocentric to Afro-Asian-Native American-centric.  If anything, Europeans have become horrible slave owning human beings who stole what they have and killed many to do it.
     According to modern history, Columbus never had any clue where he was.  The government of Spain wanted to make a lot of money by establishing colonies to exploit non-white peoples, so they hired Columbus to find a new water route.  All the other water routes were taken.  Columbus took off and accidentally landed in some part of North America.  Upon his arrival he enslaved the native peoples, killing most of them in the process, and took everything worth while.  All along, he believed he was in India, that is until Amerigo Vespucci made a map.  He made a map of something and signed it.  Those looking at Vespucci's map saw the signature and foolishly thought the land was named America.  Hence, North and South America.  Columbus was a mass murdering stealer, and Amerigo a lucky idiot.
     The true founders of America: the Native Americans of course.  They laid claim to this land, only God knows how long ago, and the Europeans had no right stealing it from them.  As a matter of fact, the Vikings were the first Europeans in the Americas, not the Italians/Spanish.  Besides, Columbus couldn't have discovered America, it was already there (although the definition of discovery is finding something that previously existed, its just that no one knew it was there: definition here).
     As I've gotten older I have learned new things about Christopher Columbus, both bad and good.  But I have always rejected the re-visionist history, researched the true history, and remembered the hero of my youth.