They were RIGHT to laugh at Columbus!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

How often have you heard the expression from someone who has just proposed some crackpot idea, “They laughed at Columbus”.

This is supposed to clinch the argument because Columbus was so obviously “right” and his opponents so obviously “wrong.”

Trouble is, Columbus was the one who was wrong and the experts who opposed his plans to sail westward to Asia were 100% right.

Columbus is like a guy who jumps out of a window when it is too dark to see the ground. He claims he will make it, because he is certain that he is on the ground floor and will land safely on the sidewalk a few feet down. Everyone else tells him no, no, no, we are on the 10th floor, you will never survive the fall.

So the guy jumps and by pure luck lands on the roof of a building next door that is nine stories high, that nobody knew was there.

Now who is right, the lucky jackass who landed on the nine-story building or the people who quite correctly told him he was on ten stories up?

A second myth about Columbus is that he was opposed by people who thought the Earth was flat. Nobody in Europe, unless they were uneducated and very very naive, thought the Earth was flat. The people who argued with Columbus agreed 100% about its rotundity.

Another myth is that Columbus somehow proved the Earth was round, and that his sailors were afraid of falling off the edge of the flat Earth. Sailing out west and then turning around and sailing back does not prove the Earth is round. And there is not a shred of evidence that the sailors on his three ships were afraid of falling off the edge of the world.

Why was Columbus wrong? Because he basically believed that the Earth was a much smaller globe than it is, and that the distance of land between Portugal/Spain going EAST to China and Japan was much much greater than it is. So he reasoned that the distance between Portugal/Spain and China/Japan going west over the ocean must be very short.

In other words, he believed that the land in the old world streched more than three quarters around the globe. This meant that by crossing ewstward you could cross over less than one quarter of the globe and reach Asia.

Now, the panel of experts appointed by the King and Queen of Spain to look into his claims knew better. They calculated that the land between Portugal and Japan did not even stretch half-way around the world. Therefore, you would have to sal over more than half the globe to reach Asia by sailing westward from Portugal or Spain.

Now take a look at a globe and tell me who was right and who was wrong?

What neither side realized is that there were two big continents lying right about where Columbus thought Asia would be. So when Columbus arrived where he figured Asia should be, he saw land, palm trees and tropical Islands, and met people who looked asiatic. So he went back to Europe more convinced than ever that he was right.

But he was WRONG, man, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

By the way, I don’t know that anyone on those panels who initiall refused Columbus actuall laughed at him. They just told him the correct facts about where Asia was.

2

Moving thread from IMHO to MPSIMS.

3

It’s just an expression . . .

But you could say anyone who says “they laughed at Columbus” is just hoping to have the same amount of dumb luck Columbus did.

And if you ask me, given the potential gains, it was inevitable that SOMEONE would keep sailing West from Europe until they found something. It was only a matter of time.

4

You are right, Lizard. In fact, it would appear that the Portugese Cabral who was the first Europan to sight Brazil was actually heading south around Africa and was blown more south-west than he expected. Surprised at seeing a mountain in the west he kept going and landed in South America. This was in 1500, only 8 years after Columbus. If you look at the map of the Atlantic and look at the layout of Africa and South America, and if you remember that Portugese and Spanish were sailing south along the African Coast, and that they would often go farther west to avoid the “Guinee Doldrums”. . . . . well, you see how it was pretty much inevitable.

5

I started a pretty successful GQ thread about this somewhat recently. It was pretty eye opening. The man was a loon. Not only did he think that where he landed was Asia the first time, he made multiple voyages and believed he was visiting Asia on each one and died thinking that. He never stopped to think it was odd most of the stuff he was looking for like certain spices weren’t there, but he also interacted with the natives quite a few times and never figured out those weren’t the people of Asia as well.

Not only that, but he came close to the modern day U.S. as well or any of the large mainland parts of North America. That isn’t that important but most people don’t realize it. He was really someone that like to take cruises around the Caribbean convinced it was another place entirely.

6

Here the pretty good GQ thread on the subject:

Why did Columbus Think that He Discovered a Route to the Far East?

7

No love for vikings?

I think Bill Bryson said it best: Why do Americans celebrate Colombus, a crazy Spanish navigator who thought he was visiting Asia, when they have a perfectly serviceable group of continent-discovers to celebrate? All Colombus did was convice the Queen of Spain to finance his voyages: Vikings rowed over looking for land and battle and song! And they were huge and muscled, with helmets with horns on! And they drank potent mead from the skulls of their dead enemies! Now that’s the American way!

8

…except the vikings liked their women big.

shrug

9

Waitaminit…Clam, you’re British!
What do you know about the American way???
…nevermind, I’ll shut up now…

10

That should read:

Not only that, but he came never close to the modern day U.S. as well or any of the large mainland parts of North America.

11

I have known the odd American in my time. Uniformly nice chaps, but there is not one of them that would not have been given the notion of “drinking mead from the skulls of your enemies” and gone “Cool!” And given your curious sports (American football*, for instance, that seems to more closely resemble a medieval melee than any other sport ever invented; or Nascar racing, wherein I gather the chief attraction is the hope that one of the competitors will suffer a horrible demise) support my belief that the Vikings are a far more appropriate role-model for your nation than some Dago navigator.

*Oh, the things I wish to say about this pestilent name…oh well, another thread, another time.

12

It’s like when some crackpot brings up Galileo. I like to say, “To claim the mantle of Galileo it is not sufficient to be persecuted for your beliefs. You must also be right.”

13

Well, I prefer to tell said crackpots that Galileo was persecuted because he couldn’t PROVE what he was claiming.

But to get to the expression that “They laughed at Columbus,” I really prefer, instead, to say, “They laughed at the Alvarezes.” Much more fitting to my own geek status.

14

Man, you have not met the fans of a University of North Carolina vs Duke U. basketball game. I guess you haven’t met Karl Rove, either.

15

Outside of the Gershwin song, never.

16

For the record

Vikings did not wear helmets with horns.

Their art shows Valkyries as thin, Nordic women.

I’ve never read of evidence that they drank from the skulls of their enemies. But the myth of the creation of mead involves the transmutation of blood into mead. I’ve read an intriguing theory that blood was actually added to honey and water to provide nitrogen for the fermentation process. Drinking from skulls would not be out of place in Viking culture, but again I haven’t seen any evidence.

BTW I’ve seen t-shirts and bumper stickers reading “Leif Got Here First!”

17

Psst. You’re not supposed to say that out loud. It makes us look garish.

18

I’m always correcting similar crackpots who claim falsely that, “EINSTEIN FLUNKED MATH!”, and so therefore, their troublemaking spawn will someday shake the world in a way that doesn’t involve being tried as an adult.

(FTR, Einstein flunked zoology and Latin, because he was very bad at rote memorizing).

19

DocCathode, fount of wisdom though you are, you are also a spoilsport. :smiley:

20

The correct answer to “They laughed at Columbus!” is “They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

For personal safety, have your escape route planned first.