Grazie, Cristoforo!

Thank you, Chris, for your amazing achievement.

So what if you really weren’t the first European to make it to the Americas, having been preceded 500 years earlier by Leif Ericson, et al? Your discovery is the only one that mattered.

So what if you grossly underestimated the circumference of the earth in thinking that it would be a shorter route to India by going west? And so what if you thought you were in India when you were actually in the Bahamas?

So what if a bunch of historical revisionists who have nothing better to do try to paint you and your achievement in the worst light, blaming you for introducing all the evils of European civilization on the supposedly peace loving and innocent indigenous peoples of the Americas?

There are still plenty of us who celebrate your courage to try something new and daring. And even if there is a grain of truth to the revisionist rants, there are those of us who maintain that the Americas are still a better place because you stumbled into them.

So thank you for your amazing feat. Thanks for joining the long line of Italian achievers, and particularly for putting your birthplace of Genoa on the map. And, last but not least, thanks for providing federal workers an extra day off in October!

Birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Genoa, Italy