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From: Ron Roizen (no email)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 14:41:59 EDT
Hi Folks...
I signed on to your list because I saw the movie 1492 and then followed up
by doing a little reading on Columbus and his great journeys. I'm thinking
about putting together a little article on this topic for the upcoming Oct.
12th holiday, and I thought -- if it gets to the draft stage -- somebody on
this list might look it over for mistakes.
What's struck me as so remarkable about the great man is how wrong he was
on so many things, and yet how little that aspect of his story actually
matters to history. For instance, the commission that rejected Columbus's
argument for a trip distance that was short enough to justify his 1st trip
was right -- right that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to
Japan and the Indies. Yet who remembers the name of one of those
commission members today?
Columbus was also woefully wrong about where he thought he was on his 1st,
2nd, 3rd, and 4th voyages. He never gave up the notion that he was
investigating islands that formed an outer barrier to the Japan and the
Asian continent. Like Joseph Priestley in the 18th c., who never quite
grasped that he had isolated oxygen, Columbus, despite public opinion's
drift in that direction, never quite accepted that he had discovered an
entirely new continent -- or, as it was put, a "New World."
These are staggering mistakes. And yet Columbus is no less an historical
giant for them; indeed, he is perhaps all the more to be honored and
marveled at.
Anyhow, let's see how my draft goes!
Happy to be here!
Ron Roizen
in landlocked Wallace, Idaho
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