I have to say that Columbus was not setting out to prove the Earth was round. He was trying to prove that European ships could sail that far to India. It turns out that they couldn't, that Columbus' calculations were totally out to lunch, Japan was waaaay farther than Columbus predicted, and that he was damn lucky that North America just happened to get in his way. Doesn't it make you wonder why there is a holiday named after him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

Why do you think the portuguese king refused his endeavour twice?

And he tripped over one thing when he was in fact looking for something completely different, and even named it wrong.

Columbus makes all the portuguese navigators seem even better than they were.

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I never knew they had white cliffs in New South Wales

139 years before James Cook named a chunk of eastern Australia "New South Wales", Welshman Thomas James gave the same name to a chunk of Canada. I guess people really like that one.

There's a Plymouth in England?

>> ^Fusionaut:

Doesn't it make you wonder why there is a holiday named after him?


I don't at all, we always celebrate the worst of mankind.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Oh good - is this back on then?

Kind of reminded me of this.

>> ^alien_concept:
There's a Plymouth in England?


Named after the it's location at the mouth of the Plym river...

Learned that on one of those fact-a-day tear-away calendars

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