A Quote by P. J. O'Rourke
Everybody in 15th century Spain was wrong about where China was and as a result, Columbus discovered Caribbean vacations.
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In the way that the 15th Century discovered the New World, the 20th Century discovered the parallel continuum.
How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now.
In the twelfth century the Basque fishermen of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with the consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did. This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view it is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did.
In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.
The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold.
Every schoolchild knows that Columbus set out across the sea to prove that the world was round. But the belief in a spherical earth had a long and illustrious pedigree, as Columbus himself was well aware. . . . "The second reason that inspired the Admiral [Columbus] to launch his enterprise and helped justify his giving the name 'Indies' to the lands which he discovered was the authority of many learned men who said that one could sail westward from the western end of Africa and Spain to the eastern end of India, and that no great sea lay between."
The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain.
Quietly scuttling Columbus Day sales doesn't mean they are opposed to 15th century Iberian seafarers; it just means They don't want protestors on the sales floor throwing blood on the Calvin Klein hosiery in the name of the anti-imperialistic cause.
There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.
We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.
14th- and 15th-century drawings are almost unheard-of - and as a result, they generate jealous desire among dealers and curators. Museums in particular value rarity and pedigree more than attractiveness.
The history of exploration has never been driven by exploration. But Columbus himself was a discoverer. So was Magellan. But the people who wrote checks were not. They had other motivations. And there's Columbus - he couldn't even get Italy to pay for his voyage so he has to go to Spain.
Food is an integral part of Caribbean life - it's diverse just like Caribbean culture, with flavour influences from India, Europe, China, South America and Africa.
People are, in the confines of their own apartments, becoming Magellans of the interior world and reaching out to this alien thing and beginning to map it and bring back stories that can only be compared to the kind of stories that the chroniclers of the New World brought back to Spain at the close of the 15th century.
Away back in that time-in 1492 - there was a man by the name of Columbus came from across the great ocean, and he discovered the country for the white man. . . . What did he find when he first arrived here? Did he find a white man standing on the continent then? . . . I stood here first, and Columbus first discovered me.
We still have to realize that if you are say a historian of the Civil War, you don’t know anything special about say Columbus or for that matter the 20th century. You are a consumer of that information, especially if it’s stuff like Columbus and the American Indians. That information isn’t even in history, much of it. Much of it is in anthropology or archeology.
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