[GCFL-discuss] [GCFL.net] Columbus

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

I hate to be a kill-joy (no, that's a lie, I love it), but Columbus was
not particularly original in realizing that the world is round. A Greek
living in Egypt circa 500 BC had figured out its circumference,
Aristotle, although he thought the world was at the center of the
universe, understood it was round, and most Christian scholars understood
the world was round. Columbus thought it was a much shorter distance from
Europe to Asia than it actually is, and he was wrong. He never did
realize he had discovered a whole new continent.

Now the notion that the earth revolves around the sun, that raised some
hackles for a few centuries. But that had nothing to do with Columbus.

The origin of the "everyone thought the earth was flat except Columbus"
myth may be traceable to Washington Irving, who made up some stories
about Columbus as a patriotic gesture. Columbus had been half-forgotten
until the infant United States of America began writing its own legend,
and some literati like Irvine dredged Columbup up as an original American
hero.

Not that Columbus was sailing to find a land where liberty could flourish
or anything like that... he was a devoted servant of Their Most Catholic
Majesties, the King and Queen of Spain.

Siarlys
(who else?)
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