A “New” World
When the uncovering of America is mentioned, Christopher Columbus immediately comes to mind. The explorer even has an official national holiday on the calendar, and scores of parades that celebrate his uncovering! Columbus is so significant in history that historians use his accomplishments to divide history into eras, making the time before 1492 “pre-Columbian.”
How many national holidays honor the name of an individual American?
Presidents' Day is celebrated in February to honor two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. The holiday is celebrated in the United States on the third Monday in February. Since becoming known as President's Day in 1971, the only two national holidays that honor an individual's name are Columbus Day and Martin Luther King's birthday.
There are some who consider this recognition misplaced, as his attempts to reach the Far East were unsuccessful. Yet many people feel that celebration is appropriate when one considers, in the words of J. H. Parry, an authority of Spanish explorers, that “Columbus did not discover a new world; he established contact between two worlds, both already old.”
Christopher Columbus was born near Genoa, in northern Italy, in 1451. Young Columbus began his seafaring career shortly after Portuguese navigators reached the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa in 1460. A few years later, he sailed commercial routes between Genoa and other Mediterranean ports before voyages to the Aegean island of Chios (near what is now Turkey), England, the Portuguese island of Madeira, and Guinea (on Africa's west coast). In between these journeys, he married and became a father.
