# Does anyone really even care about Christopher Columbus? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 14, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764 "2019-10-14T20:59:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/21 "2019-10-15T10:42:25Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Discovering Ohio is a pretty big deal. Is it? ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/22 "2019-10-15T10:43:40Z")
When’s Leif Eiriksson day? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/23 "2019-10-15T11:38:31Z")
What bugs me is the idea that Columbus was this evil conqueror that if he had only stayed at home North Americans would have stayed happily peaceful or that had anyone else landed they would have first asked permission or something, I dont know. The point is it happened and I think we should move on. Slamming Columbus by rewriting history books to make him the bad guy or by vandalizing his statue does no good. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/24 "2019-10-15T12:09:43Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > “Round! Flat! Round! Flat! Round! Flat!” > > “Well, if it’s the Captain’s Mess, let him clean it up.” > > That’s all I can remember from a classic cartoon, that is unfairly withheld from public view because it gives Columbus a broad Italian accent, and King Ferdinand a broad Mexican accent. > > Political correctness in squelching comedy is one of the few things I lean right on. “She’s a round, she’s a firm, she’s a fully packed! She’s a round, like a you head!” _ **WHACK** _ “She’s a flat, like a you head!” ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/25 "2019-10-15T12:13:38Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And it’s pointing the wrong way. The story of why the statue is pointing East instead of West is quite interesting. Originally, it was going to be erected with the effigy of Columbus pointing indeed towards the West. However, the statue was to be placed right in front of the old port of Barcelona, right next to the sea, and it was felt that it would look really weird to have the great navigator pointing inland, towards the mountains. So, they decided that Columbus would be pointing towards the sea, with his back to the mountains, to emphasize his role of sailor and admiral and all that. Besides, technically speaking the statue still points towards America, only going the long way round the globe… ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/26 "2019-10-15T12:42:39Z")
Yesterday, when I turned off the tv, the local news’ online poll had a grand total of 7 votes 4-3 against changing Columbus day to Indigenous day. My feeling is; Who cares honestly? let the feds and kiddies have their day off already and stfu all you people up in arms over this! there’s more important shit to worry about than who got here first. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/27 "2019-10-15T12:52:58Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > Is it? We’d only have 49 states without it. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/28 "2019-10-15T12:54:08Z")
We don’t take St. Patrick’s Day off work, or Cinco De Mayo either. Why should an Italian heritage day be different? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/29 "2019-10-15T13:10:42Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > We don’t take St. Patrick’s Day off work, or Cinco De Mayo either. Why should an Italian heritage day be different? Those holidays can pop up on any day of the week. Columbus Day is conveniently always on a Monday. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/30 "2019-10-15T14:17:54Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > I know the Italian Catholic Federation is pretty darn incensed that some unpatriotic folks want to trade it in for Indigenous People’s Day,… The truly mind-crushing bit is why USA people give a flying fart about him any more than Magellan or good old Leif (Garrett or Erikson, I can never remember); he never even SAW what would be the continental US. For what it’s worth I’m all for something like Indigenous People’s Day, but I really can’t think of a more inappropriate day for it than CC day. Maybe expand [Native American Day](https://www.calendar-365.com/holidays/native-american-day.html). ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/31 "2019-10-15T14:26:03Z")
My edumacation was a bit spotty - tell me, why don’t we live in the United States of Columbus (Columbia?)? Who was this Amerigo Vespucci and why did his name take? (yes, I know, I could go goggle it) ---
**Author:** ![2ManyTacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/3da27b/32.png) [@2ManyTacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ManyTacos)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/32 "2019-10-15T14:36:07Z")
To the extent that I care about Christopher Columbus, it’s mostly in that I am still to this day pissed off that I got force fed the whitewashed ‘heroic’ portrait of Columbus when I was in elementary school. Like, if we as a society are going to teach kids about CC, then actually _teach_ them about him as he actually was. It does not matter one iota to me whether a kid is only in the second grade or whatever when the Columbus history lesson is introduced; the world is a rough place and sanitizing the CC story doesn’t do anybody any favors. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/33 "2019-10-15T14:41:04Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > What bugs me is the idea that Columbus was this evil conqueror that if he had only stayed at home North Americans would have stayed happily peaceful or that had anyone else landed they would have first asked permission or something, I dont know. The point is it happened and I think we should move on. Slamming Columbus by rewriting history books to make him the bad guy or by vandalizing his statue does no good. The problem isn’t that it happened, the problem is that he’s glorified and thus his actions are glorified, which they shouldn’t be. We could celebrate what happened in a way that is respectful and reverent to the people who lost their lives, land and culture instead of the cartoon cock-licking we do today when it comes to revering Columbus. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/34 "2019-10-15T14:44:43Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > My edumacation was a bit spotty - tell me, why don’t we live in the United States of Columbus (Columbia?)? Who was this Amerigo Vespucci and why did his name take? A cartographer whose map of the newly-discovered lands became very popular. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/35 "2019-10-15T15:04:48Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > What bugs me is the idea that Columbus was this evil conqueror that if he had only stayed at home North Americans would have stayed happily peaceful or that had anyone else landed they would have first asked permission or something, I dont know. The point is it happened and I think we should move on. Slamming Columbus by rewriting history books to make him the bad guy or by vandalizing his statue does no good. You do realize that Christopher Columbus was vilified for his brutality and corruption by his contempories, even by people who admired him? And in fact, he did some prison time for his excesses and was only rescued because he had some greedy-ass patrons. I think it is fair to say some violence was inevitable no matter which white man claimed the New World for the crown. But CC wasn’t just violent. He was sadistic even for his time. Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/36 "2019-10-15T15:17:58Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > What bugs me is the idea that Columbus was this evil conqueror that if he had only stayed at home North Americans would have stayed happily peaceful or that had anyone else landed they would have first asked permission or something, I dont know. The point is it happened and I think we should move on. Slamming Columbus by rewriting history books to make him the bad guy or by vandalizing his statue does no good. Writing history books accurately would mean including that everyone who knew anything about the subject already knew that the world was round; that others had been before him; and that he enslaved and murdered people who he found. Continuing to write history books to make him the good guy, let alone The Good And Intelligent Guy Who Figured Out What Nobody Else Could, doesn’t do any good. And yet every year it seems that there are people in this area who write indignant letters to the paper insisting that history books and news media shouldn’t tell the truth. – what I find interesting is that it did turn out to be massively important that somebody got so thoroughly lost in the Atlantic ocean that even after landing he thought he was on a different continent entirely. It wasn’t as if he was the first person to go back and forth between the continents, even in that millenia. I don’t think, if you’d asked assorted people all over the world in 1492 or even for some years after he got back to Europe what the most important thing that happened in 1492 was, that any of them would have said ‘Somebody named Colombo got lost in the Atlantic Ocean.’ Always makes me wonder what’s happening in the current year that we’re not thinking of as important, or not noticing at all, but that may wind up causing that sort of shift. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/37 "2019-10-15T15:27:30Z")
FWIW, it’s not a school holiday in Montgomery Country or Prince George’s Country Maryland. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/38 "2019-10-15T15:29:31Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > I recall being fed the whitewash in elementary school, and as long as you knew he was a sailor who accidentally put a Spanish boat on the American East Coast (no need to differentiate: North or South America, Caribbean, whatever was close enough) rather than in and Indian port, it just never came up again. When folks started harping a few years ago about what a monster he was I just gave it a “Meh: European Christian victimizes swarthy natives? Wake me up when the news comes on.” Of course he was a prick. Yawn city, that was like 500+ years ago, and it’s not like he’s some great hero, right? RIGHT? > > So what have you seen? And when did you see it? I mean Buggs Bunny seemed pretty impressed by him, but you never really knew when Buggs was being serious or just playing for laughs. But has anyone actually seen/heard, firsthand, a live human being crowing about what a non-savage, genuinely adventurous genius CC was? Or is he just a gigantic strawman? Back in 1999, no less an authority than _Life Magazine_ called Columbus [the 2nd most important person of the past 1,000 years](https://www.tostepharmd.net/hissoc/top100people.html). Michael Hart, in his 1978 list of the most influential people in recorded history, put Columbus #9: [The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100:_A_Ranking_of_the_Most_Influential_Persons_in_History) Back in 2010 I ran a round-robin contest, based upon Hart’s list, of the most influential people in history. The SDMB dropped Christo from #9 to #81: [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12625376&postcount=696](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12625376&postcount=696) ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/39 "2019-10-15T15:39:16Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Slamming Columbus by rewriting history books to make him the bad guy or by vandalizing his statue does no good. So you think that rewriting history books to portray actual history instead of absurd fiction is a bad thing? That we should keep up statues to someone so awful even his contemporaries considered his behavior abhorrent? I’m going to have to disagree and say that history books should contain accurate history, not bowlderized and whitewashed accounts, and that statues to awful people celebrating awful things should come down. Remember, the quote below is what you’re defending: > [@](#): > > Natives were regularly whipped for what Columbus considered minor offenses — but stealing a vegetable or animal could result in cutting off a Taíno’s nose, ear, or hand; the offender was sometimes forced to walk around with their severed body part in shame. Columbus took and gifted Taíno women to his crewmen, who would violently beat and rape them. Pregnant Taíno women who were taken captive gave birth to babies who were sometimes thrown to hungry dogs. Columbus established a business in the sale of 9- and 10-year-old Taíno girls for sexual slavery. He also kidnapped and enslaved Taínos themselves — personally initiating the transatlantic slave trade in his voyage back to Europe. > > In short, Columbus was a murderous, enslaving, sexual-abusing, treacherous colonizer to the peoples he encountered in the Caribbean. Only two-thirds of the Taíno survived just four years after Columbus’ arrival; some were killed, others succumbed to diseases, and fully half of the dead killed themselves rather than live with his tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764/40 "2019-10-15T15:43:53Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > And it’s pointing the wrong way. Sculptor Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney managed to face hers correctly over in Huelva in 1929. > **[Retracing the Spanish Path of My Ancestor, the Founder of the Whitney...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/travel/huelva-spain-gertrude-vanderbilt-whitney-christopher-columbus.html)** > > In Huelva, the socialite-turned-sculptor created a monumental Christopher Columbus statue. The writer sought her history there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-really-even-care-about-christopher-columbus/841764.md?page=3)