Columbus : that one guy reaches that one place.

One guy.* Three ships. All the glory in the world to be had.

Of course you remember the ditty:

In 1492,
Columbus sailed the ocean…

…I can never remember the color. I’ve requested that our children not remember this date, because I’m afraid it will clog up their memories with information they don’t need.

“Remember 476 AD,” I say.

“Or 1440, if you must,” I sigh.

“Or even 100 BC,” I capitulate. “But 1492 is not a date you have to have stuck in your head.”

Is it important? Should they remember it? Is Columbus both hero and villain?

I suppose, probably, and possibly yes.

Chris Columbus (not the director of the first Harry Potter and the awful Percy Jackson movies) was heading for the East Indies essentially in pursuit of the three Gs : God, glory, gold. He was gonna make his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, so, so happy. He’d be rich and famous.

Funny thing: he never realized that he hadn’t actually landed somewhere around China or Japan. The continent he “discovered” - okay, he did discover it on behalf of Europe (sorry, Leif Ericsson) - actually ended up being much more valuable than the one he thought he’d found.

And thus begin the European hordes descending upon the New World, bringing their ideas, their culture, their religion, and…

…their diseases to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Notes

Of course it wasn’t one guy sailing three ships. There were a bunch others. But do we remember any of those names; the guys who did all the hard work of sailing and cooking and cleaning and such?

No. We remember the guy whose vision, for better or worse, brought those three ships to the Americas.