Christopher Columbus Facts

Why you Don’t Need to be Smart to Get Good Grades Sophomore year, AP U.S. History. My class was writing a Document Based Question (DBQ) over Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration. (A document based question is an essay where you use factual evidence given in the form of documents to write an essay). I knew nothing! My mind was blanker than the vacuum of space itself.

Loewen argues, “The authors of history textbooks have taken us on a trip of their own, away from the facts of history, into the realm of myth.” As historical events regress further into the past, writers may misinterpret facts that they may have studied. A story of discovery and friendship or a tale of conquest, murder, and greed, which of these are Christopher Columbus’ true stories? I believe the best method to teach American high school students about Christopher Columbus’ story is through historiography because historiography teaches students to compare and distinguish different outlooks from different writers’ point of views instead of just remembering misinterpreted facts. Historiography would guide and force students to study and learn history through a diverse set of historians who focused on the same subject and come to different conclusions.

In October of 1492, Portuguese explorer Christopher Columbus landed by ship in the “New World” which is today known as the Americas. Many people believe the holiday that honors him annually in October has great meaning behind it. However, I believe Columbus day should not be celebrated. Christopher Columbus was not the first person ever to discover the Americas, he abused natives on their own land, and the holiday isn’t celebrated in the way it should be. Christopher Columbus was not the first to discover the Americas.

Christopher Columbus We are starting this essay on Christopher Columbus about should we celebrate columbus day. I know that we get out of school on this day but we shouldn't have to celebrate him because he was a cruel evil man. After him and his friends discovered america his did a lot of mean things. I think we shouldn't celebrate columbus day cause he was heartless. One reason why i think we shouldn't celebrate columbus day is that him and his men enslaved many native inhabitants of the west indies and subjected them to them to extreme violence and brutality.

Not only did Columbus bring wealth to Europe through his works, colored people were oppressed and are unmentioned. Textbooks don 't reveal behind the prosperity and don 't mention these things because no one wants a “hero” to be a bad guy. For

Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492 by accident he was trying to travel to India, Japan, and China, or Asia via the Atlantic Ocean to send spices, gold, and slaves back to Europe. Columbus sailed under king Ferdinand and queen Isabella I of Spain after he was turned down by England. Columbus changed the world meaning without him the world would be much a different place for example without Columbus people would never have migrated from across the world, and colonize America. There are some basic facts about Christopher Columbus. Now on to why the articles are

When I was younger I was under the impression that Christopher Columbus was a great man and that he discovered America. We celebrate Columbus day because we honor him for “discovering America”. From this new information that I have learned today, Christopher Columbus is not the man iv have been taught about.

Specifically, it suggested that everything I had learned previously during my education was wrong and was more aligned with the mythic depiction of the west. The title alone, “The Rancid Myth of Columbus”, was jarring, and shocked me because I was used to hearing Columbus praised. However, the article written by Rodolfo Acuña, insists that this celebration is wildly “offensive” (Acuña 1). Reading Acuña’s sardonic and brutally honest remarks left me immediately smitten with both the the article and our ‘American West’ course itself. This is because I finally felt like I was being educated with the truth, which is something that no textbook or teacher prior to this course would have to dared to convey.

TEACH THE CHILDREN THE TRUTH Just like you , I learned at a very early age of a great man ,a navigator, a genius named “Christopher Columbus” (and by the way that was not even his real name)This sea fearing explorer sailed across the seas and landed in Jamaica on May 5, 1494. When I first learned of this man whom I deemed a demigod in my advanced naiveté , I was so fascinated by the story that I would often gather groups of little kids to dramatize the story as if I was there and saw it with my own two eyes. By the time I got to high school and met the greatest history teacher ever, George Hall of William Knibb that was it. I was totally consumed, engulfed and possessed by history. I remember going home and teaching my entire family everything that George Hall taught me in a given day, and when they couldn’t take anymore, I would teach it to my two dogs, Bully and Jet.

According to Loewen, few textbooks explained how Columbus was involved in the slavery and the exploitation of Indians. Another error that we have learned in schools about Columbus is that he was the first person to “discover” America. However, this is an error because people from other continents had already reached America before 1492. In fact, we forget

Imagine you were back in elementary school, would you like to be taught that Columbus discovered America, do all these activities and projects about how he was the founder of America then ahain later on in life be taught that he is not discoverer of America? I sure wouldn’t. I believe it is a waste of my time, learning something useless when instead I should be taught the truth which will then extend my knowledge further as I progress into higher grades. Once again, Columbus did not discover America. Native Americans had already settled down and was living peacefully in the Americas by the time Columbus first set sail.

Therefore, many are surprised to learn who Columbus was and the cruelties of his actions and his pursuits. Columbus Day is meant to be a day celebrating our country’s origin, however not only did Christopher Columbus not discover America, but he didn’t provide any new or useful information to European explorers of the time. The one thing he did do, though, was promoting terrorism and genocide, which even to this day has had an impact on Americans. In other words,

Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two. When one hears the name Christopher Columbus, they tend to think about his discovery of America. What they don’t consider is how his discovery changed and affected America. First of all, Columbus’ discovery provided the start of a long term colonization, which created what we know today as America. People, who immigrated from another country, traveled all over the world to make it to America in hopes of getting land in “The New World”.

Holidays around the world are celebrated to remember and commemorate certain times in history, and to keep those dates important. For quite some time, Columbus Day has been a questionable holiday. Some people say it should be a holiday because we are acknowledging the fact that he discovered the Americas. In contrast, others disagree because of the ways he treated the original inhabitants of the places he discovered. This paper will argue that Columbus Day should not be a holiday because he exploited, murdered, and enslaved many natives throughout his journeys.

Christopher Columbus is a man who is commonly depicted as a hero and great explorer who discovered our modern day America, but many of the so called “facts” are not all completely true as people would like to believe. Columbus was undoubtedly a courageous explorer who brought many new ideas, cultures, and resources to be exchanged between the New World and Europe. While this is true, it is not uncommon for people to forget the harmful effects brought along with the voyages made by Columbus and the darker details of his times in America. Columbus started from humble middle class family. Columbus was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa as the oldest of his four siblings.