History Bonus for August 3

Christopher Columbus

It was on August 3, 1492 that Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain with a convoy of three small ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, accompanied by fewer than 100 crewmen. They left Spain half an hour before sunrise to begin the search for a water passage to Cathay. Instead, Columbus and company landed on October 12 at Guanahani, San Salvador Island in the Bahamas ... not India but the New World of the Americas. The cost of the entire expedition was seven thousand dollars. One half of this cost was used to purchase the three the ships. Columbus received only three hundred dollars to lead the expedition.

Christopher Columbus, who insisted on being called Admiral of the Ocean, was probably responsible for the biggest blunder in the history of the world. Columbus is generally given credit for having discovered the New World.

We generally think that he was alone in realizing that the world was round. This is not true. Actually, the ancient Greeks were responsible for this belief. At the time of Columbus most of the upper class and the intelligentsia believed that the earth was round. What Columbus was trying to prove was that the earth was 25% smaller than generally believed. He believed that he could find a shorter route to India. He believed that he could sail westward with the ships of his day and reach India.

Columbus also believed that Asia was larger than believed by the people of his time. Believing that the Asian continent was larger, it would extend further to the east. This would place Spain closer to India and Columbus expected to sail a short distance to the west and reach India.

Columbus was wrong. The earth was not smaller and Asia was not larger. Columbus reached a "New World", and never even knew it. He thought that he had landed in India and dubbed his discovery West India. Nearly 500 years later the area still is called the West Indies, marking all the maps of the world with another Columbus error. 

 Source: The Blunder Book - M. Hirsh Goldberg

Christopher Columbus, Italian explorer, Insulted by Ambrose Bierce.

Columbus was not a learned man, but an ignorant. He was not an honorable man, but a professional pirate...His voyage was undertaken with a view solely to his own advantage, the gratification of an incredible avarice. In the lust of gold he committed deeds of cruelty, treachery and oppression for which no fitting names are found in the vocabulary of any modern tongue. To the harmless and hospitable peoples among whom he came he was a terror and a curse...

© Phillip Bower