Sunday,
October 08, 2006
US Govt Salutes
Christopher Columbus as a Visionary
The ANNOTICO
Report
Some historians
rush to point out that Columbus was not the
first European successfully to cross the Atlantic.
Viking sailors are believed to have established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland sometime in
the 11th Century.
However, the
Vikings hop scotched around the Northern end of the Atlantic,
which meant there was little more than 500 miles at the greatest gaps, and they
hugged the coasts for the greatest share of their voyages. Hardly a worthy
comparison!!!!!
Other scholars
have argued for a number of other possible pre-Columbian landings, which could
have included the short trip between Ghana, West Africa and Recife, Brazil
a mere 2000 miles.
Columbus, however, initiated the LASTING
encounter between Europeans and the peoples of the Western
Hemisphere.
Columbus left
Palos Spain on
Friday, August 3, 1492, and arrived at San
Salvador October 12th, 2 +months, and
approx.4000 miles.
To read from Columbus' own Journal of
his first Voyage, see http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.html
Americans Honor
Bold Spirits of Columbus
Holiday
celebrates explorers' trek to New World
hundreds of years ago
Washington -- The United States will celebrate Columbus Day
October 9 to honor the legendary Italian explorer who landed in the New World in 1492.
The holiday is an
opportunity to celebrate the Italian heritage many Americans share with Columbus, as well as the important relationship
between the United States
and Italy and the
contributions of Italian Americans to U.S. history and culture, according
to a presidential proclamation issued October 5.
Today, the
same passion for discovery that drove Columbus
is leading bold visionaries to explore the frontiers of space, find new energy
sources, and solve our most difficult medical challenges, President Bush
said in the proclamation.
October 9 also is
designated in the United States
as Leif Erikson Day, in honor of the great explorer of Icelandic and Norwegian
heritage who became one of the first Europeans known to reach North
America.
Americans
have always valued the ideals of exploration and discovery, said a
presidential proclamation released on October 4. A desire to seek
and understand ... remains a central part of our national character.
Columbus Day is
the annual U.S.
commemoration of Christopher Columbus's landing in the New World (at San Salvador island, also known
as Waitling
Island, today part of the
British Bahamas) on October 12, 1492.
A number of
nations celebrate this encounter with annual holidays, such as Discovery Day in
the Bahamas.
In 1971, Congress moved the U.S.
holiday from October 12 to the second Monday in October, to afford workers a
long holiday weekend. In the United States,
Columbus Day is typically a celebration of Italian and Italian-American
cultural heritage, Columbus generally being
considered a native of Genoa.
In the late
fifteenth century, Portuguese sailors dominated the effort to establish a sea
route between Europe and India
by circumnavigating Africa. It was with an eye
toward outflanking the Portuguese that Isabella I of Spain
authorized an expedition in which Columbus would
sail west from Spain, aiming
for India.
This of course presumed that the world was round. Contrary to later popular
belief, many educated people already understood this; Columbus' achievement rests instead in his
success in persuading Isabella to finance a dangerous and speculative
expedition.
Columbus set sail with 90 men in
August 1492 on three ships: the Santa
Maria, the Nina and the Pinta.
After sailing west for five weeks, they reached land on October 12. Columbus believed he had found a new route to India, hence
the use of the word Indians to describe the peoples he met.
Columbus would make three
subsequent voyages and would die believing that he had found a new route to India and Asia, and not in fact the gateway to
North and South America.
Because the United States evolved out of British
colonization rather than the Spanish claims of Columbus
and his successors, the U.S.
for many years did not celebrate Columbus's
"discovery," although ceremonies were held on the 300th and 400th
anniversaries of his first landing. Two early celebrations also occurred in New York in 1866 and San Francisco in 1869.
Italian
immigrants were the first to celebrate the holiday annually in U.S. cities where they had settled in large
numbers, in part as a celebration of their heritage, since Columbus was believed to be Italian. In 1937,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday,
then held every October 12 and now on the second Monday in October.
U.S. federal government
offices close on Columbus Day, as do most banks. Schools typically remain open,
as do most American businesses. New York City
continues to host a large and festive Columbus Day parade, over 500 years since
the historic appearance of three ships off the coast of a small Caribbean island.
http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/life_and_
culture/holidays/columbus_day.html
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