The History Of Columbus Day

Happy Columbus Day.

That’s right, today is Columbus Day. A holiday that, a lot of times, goes unnoticed in the holiday world (probably because Hallmark didn’t make it up). However, like the post office and bank system, we should honor this day just like the rest of the big named holidays.*

* – Not the big named holidays like Christmas, Independence Day, Easter, Valentine’s Day, etc. But like the “other” big named holidays such as Arbor Day and Flag Day.

It was over 500 years ago that Christopher Columbus risked his life with three boats to discover land and prove that the world was indeed not flat. The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria took sail and never looked back. Unlike that whimpy Titanic, they avoided all icebergs and predictable plot lines and went on to discover land. The land that ended up being the Americas. And Columbus did all of this before turning 42. Suck on that, Favre.

Many people undermine Columbus Day and don’t understand how important of a day this day is. Without Christopher Columbus, what would be the name of the city that The Ohio State is located? But even more importantly than that, had C.C. never made this voyage, would we still be living in an over-populated Europe? Would we be instead celebrating Hernando De Soto Day? (No offense, to Chris, but De Soto Day does have a cooler ring to it.) Seriously, this is a very important day, so send your grandmother a card.

We do know a lot about the Columbus voyages and his life. Although, it is very vague how Christopher Columbus died. Even the always correct and never falsely edited Wikipedia.com has two different reasonings for his death:

According to a study, published in February 2007, by Antonio Rodriguez Cuartero, Department of Internal Medicine of the University of Granada, he died of a heart attack caused by reactive arthritis. According to his personal diaries and notes by contemporaries, the symptoms of this illness (burning pain during urination, pain and swelling of the knees, and conjunctivitis) were clearly evident in his last three years.

Surprisingly enough, Korked Bats has the actual cause of death of Christopher Columbus. It was around 1506 when Christopher Columbus wanted to set sail again to discover even more unclaimed land. He ventured out with three more ships, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This time, Columbus wasn’t as successful as his previous journey as he sailed off the edge of the world. Huh, turns out the world WAS flat after all.