Christopher Columbus Facts

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In the United States, Christopher Columbus is known for sailing the ocean blue in 1492 and thus discovering the Americas and leading the way for other Europeans to follow. He is the great intellectual that first thought of the world as being round instead of flat and was courageous enough to prove it. All this and much more, but, in reality Columbus was just another simple explorer out of Europe, trying to make some money by finding a new route to India. The man is painted as a hero and is given a national holiday even though he is responsible for the murder and enslavement of many Native Americans. In truth, a lot of what we know about Columbus is untrustworthy; some of it may be correct but a lot of it is just lies. There are numerous myths surrounding Columbus, one of them being that he was the first person ever to think that the Earth was round not flat. This is completely false; in Columbus’s time there were maps and even globes which indicated that people knew the Earth was round preceding his journey, it was common knowledge. Another more prominent myth is that he…show more content…
The majority of them only get the date of his voyage and the ships that were sailed correct. Most textbooks include a picture of Columbus when discussing him even though nobody knows what he actually looked like, a portrait was never done of him. In fact very little is known about Columbus himself, nearly every fact about him is up for debate. Was he really Italian? Was he really Christian or was he Jewish? Was he poor or rich? Etc. Also instead of sticking to facts, many textbooks go into some sort of story-telling mode when discussing Columbus. Entire conversations shown as though someone was there writing everything down. Finally, 99% of all textbooks omit Columbus’s cruelty towards the Native Americans or the widespread disease and instead teach fabricated
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