Can we please give some credit where credit is due? I’m talking Christopher Columbus, the man who discovered America. Everybody knows the story, they taught it to as schoolchildren. In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And he found America. Nobody else had the guts to go out there and find America. Everyone was too afraid that they’d fall off the face of the flat Earth.
Again, this is all rudimentary American history, I’m not going to go through the whole tried and true “it really happened” story. Because it did happen. And why do I even have to mention that, that it really happened? Because every year, Columbus Day rolls around, and you see a bunch of stuff on the Internet, like “Columbus was an asshole!” or “He didn’t really discover America!”
Or my favorite, “People didn’t really think the earth was flat!” to which I say, oh yeah? If the ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round, how come they didn’t send any ships over to find America? Because they didn’t know the earth was round, and they didn’t know America even existed. That’s why Alexander the Great’s empire collapsed. That’s why Xerxes won at the end of 300. And that’s why The New Adventures of Hercules and Eolis wasn’t renewed for a seventh season.
“Oh but what about the Vikings! What about Newfoundland!” Listen, has anybody ever been to Newfoundland? Because I haven’t. And if you’re thinking it’s a little solipsistic of me to write off a place as nonexistent just because I haven’t been there, I’d like to offer this: none of my friends have ever been to Newfoundland. Have you? Seriously, have you? Because I’ve had friends and family members visit a lot of places, Japan, Africa, even Toronto. So yeah, I can say with some confidence that I’m pretty sure they’re all real. But Newfoundland? Vikings?
I’m not even sure that the Vikings ever existed. But I’m getting off topic. Let’s just say for argument’s sake that Newfoundland does exist. Couldn’t these so-called Vikings have simply crossed the frozen North Pole, straight up from Scandinavia, and then ventured down south to Canada? So even if Newfoundland does exist, it’s not like these bearded adventurers had to cross any oceans or anything. No, because they wouldn’t have, because everybody that was born before Columbus proved that the world is round simply took it as a matter of fact that the planet Earth was flat.
“It doesn’t matter at all,” the naysayers complain every year, “because Columbus was a jerk, he butchered the indigenous population, he would chop off the limbs of little children to test out the sharpness of his blades, he demanded tributes of gold from everyone under his rule and mutilated anybody that failed to meet the quota,” blah, blah, blah.
No way. I remember watching this video in the first grade, it was the complete story of Christopher Columbus, it was a cartoon, how he convinced the Queen of Spain that the earth was round, how he led those three ships across an unprecedented transatlantic voyage. When he finally reached dry land, I distinctly remember him marching to the shore, meeting a group of curious Indians and saying, “Hello! My name is Christopher Columbus! I come in peace!”
Why would they teach little kids something if it were so completely contrary to what actually happened? They wouldn’t do that, not in America, not in the greatest school system in the world. It wouldn’t make any sense, to take something so wildly inaccurate and then present it to little kids as historical fact. What would be the point of such needless revisionism? No, I can only assume that everyone else is lying, that instead of looking to Columbus and seeing a great man, they’re just petty, angry, jealous that they weren’t the ones that got to discover America.
Everybody loves Christopher Columbus. The people of Columbus, Ohio, they really, really love Columbus. The nation of Colombia, they love Columbus even more, they named the whole country after Columbus. That should have been our country’s name, the United States of Colombia. I can’t believe we dropped the ball on that one.
Let’s just give the guy some credit, OK? To a great man, one of the greatest, Christopher J. Columbus. I wish every day were Columbus Day.