Yeah, the cartoon I was shown in first grade of Columbus, the eccentric genius who first postulated that the Earth was round…is full of shit.
Everyone including Columbus knew the Earth was round. Columbus was the weirdo moron who used statute miles in an equation that called for nautical miles and then miscalculated the Earth’s size by about a third. He managed to convince the Spanish crown to fund a voyage (I think they finally funded the voyage hoping he’d sail out to sea, die and shut up), he sailed South to the Canaries and then a little south of due West, expecting to hit the Philippines.
And lo he made landfall on a series of large-ish islands like Haiti, Cuba and Jamaica. Why wouldn’t you think those were the Philippines? On a later voyage, you sail further East, mistaking the Yucatan penninsula for Indonesia, and then arrive at a long, North-South shoreline which is…totally Malaysia. You sail up and down the isthmus of Central America looking for…and somehow never finding, the Singapore Straight, because you’re not in the Gulf of Thailand, you’re in the Gulf of Mexico.
On yet another voyage, he sailed farther South, came across the delta of the Orinoco river, and came to the reasonable conclusion that a river with this much discharge must mean this is a huge landmass…but because you can’t make a man understand something if his job requires not understanding it, he assumed this was “the earthly paradise” which is why it was somehow uncharted this whole time.
Amerigo Vespucci was on a different voyage intending to find the way South around that landmass, and history records him as the one looking at Uruguay and saying “Look guys, I’m pretty sure this isn’t Indonesia.”
What a brainfuck Australia would have been to these people.
Yeah, the cartoon I was shown in first grade of Columbus, the eccentric genius who first postulated that the Earth was round…is full of shit.
Everyone including Columbus knew the Earth was round. Columbus was the weirdo moron who used statute miles in an equation that called for nautical miles and then miscalculated the Earth’s size by about a third.
Not only did everyone know the Earth was round, they knew he was wrong about its size. They didn’t object to the voyage because they thought they’d fall off the face of the Earth, they objected because it was a ridiculously long way to go all around the globe from Spain to India.
Like I say, I think Ferdinand and Isabella funded the mission hoping he’d die of scurvy 9,000 miles off shore so he’d quit bothering them. It just so happened that approximately where he extremely wrongly calculated India to be sat the islands of the Caribbean, and a bunch of people who had no idea what cosmic anvils were about to descend from on high upon them.
Yeah, the cartoon I was shown in first grade of Columbus, the eccentric genius who first postulated that the Earth was round…is full of shit.
Everyone including Columbus knew the Earth was round. Columbus was the weirdo moron who used statute miles in an equation that called for nautical miles and then miscalculated the Earth’s size by about a third. He managed to convince the Spanish crown to fund a voyage (I think they finally funded the voyage hoping he’d sail out to sea, die and shut up), he sailed South to the Canaries and then a little south of due West, expecting to hit the Philippines.
And lo he made landfall on a series of large-ish islands like Haiti, Cuba and Jamaica. Why wouldn’t you think those were the Philippines? On a later voyage, you sail further East, mistaking the Yucatan penninsula for Indonesia, and then arrive at a long, North-South shoreline which is…totally Malaysia. You sail up and down the isthmus of Central America looking for…and somehow never finding, the Singapore Straight, because you’re not in the Gulf of Thailand, you’re in the Gulf of Mexico.
On yet another voyage, he sailed farther South, came across the delta of the Orinoco river, and came to the reasonable conclusion that a river with this much discharge must mean this is a huge landmass…but because you can’t make a man understand something if his job requires not understanding it, he assumed this was “the earthly paradise” which is why it was somehow uncharted this whole time.
Amerigo Vespucci was on a different voyage intending to find the way South around that landmass, and history records him as the one looking at Uruguay and saying “Look guys, I’m pretty sure this isn’t Indonesia.”
What a brainfuck Australia would have been to these people.
Not only did everyone know the Earth was round, they knew he was wrong about its size. They didn’t object to the voyage because they thought they’d fall off the face of the Earth, they objected because it was a ridiculously long way to go all around the globe from Spain to India.
Like I say, I think Ferdinand and Isabella funded the mission hoping he’d die of scurvy 9,000 miles off shore so he’d quit bothering them. It just so happened that approximately where he extremely wrongly calculated India to be sat the islands of the Caribbean, and a bunch of people who had no idea what cosmic anvils were about to descend from on high upon them.
URUGUAY MENCIONADO! PONGAN LAS BANDERAS!