Replace Columbus Day with Leif Ericson Day?

[minionofmidas]

It's Erikson actually (btw, there's a very high probability that the Vikings did make permanent settlement).

There's also a high probability that Irish and Welsh religious fanatics Holy Men etc landed pretty early as well.

And then there's the English Fishermen (almost certainly beginning to wipe out Newfoundland's cod stocks fishing off Newfoundland before Columbus landed in what he thought was China/India/Japan).

English, French, Basque, Portuguese...
The thing is, that there was some unbiblical land to the Northwest was an open secret by the time Columbus sailed Southwest. Columbus himself, in younger years, went to "Thule" (probably Iceland) and no doubt knew of these stories.

The old 18th century legend that Columbus claimed the earth was round and it was therefore possible to sail westward to Asia is totally bogus.
Columbus claimed that the Earth, which everybody knew to be round, was a lot smaller than had previosuly been supposed (actually, the previous calculations were pretty much spot on) and it was therefore possible to sail westward to Asia. He may also have concluded that the land to the NW was part of Asia.

[minionofmidas]

He never set foot on the mainland? You sure? He did sight it, that's for sure.
He was at the mouth of the Orinoco and somewhere in Guatemala or Nicaragua or something.

[minionofmidas]

Lots of intelligent halftruths here.
Yes, the "discovery" of America (something of a mystery term) caused horrible suffering, BR. But then, your country wouldn't exist if no European had ever sailed westwards and spread pandemics among Native Americans. If you can't come to term with that relationship, may I advocate suicide?
Yes, Phil, Columbus started the tradition of European conquest and resettlement of the Americas.
Yes, Al, he wasn't directly involved with events in North America.
The Spanish stopped expanding in North America after about the 1550s, for quite a long time. I guess they had more important gains to consolidate. Except for some mission settlements in Florida and Georgia, and of course for Spanish New Mexico (including parts of modern Texas), they didn't colonize the modern U.S. (although Harry rightly mentions Puerto Rico, and forgets to mention the Virgini Islands.) US colonial history proper begins at Jamestown in 1607, or Roanoke twenty years before for all I care, might conceivably (but not very likely) have happened without Spanish conquests further South, and probably would not have happened without the North Atlantic fishery.

Here's an odd fact: In the late 17th and early 18th century, a third of Carolina's slaves were Native Americans. Large numbers of these were Roman Catholics, from the Florida and Georgia missions, raided by Heathen Indians allied to the British. Thousands of Southeastern US Native Americans were also sold into slavery in the Caribbean.
Early African christianity in North America may have been transmitted largely by these Christian Indian slaves.

[minionofmidas]

No. They could get the fish without much government involvement. In fact, colonization of Nfld. begun in a pretty offhanded manner, unplanned as it were. The Peruvian Silver mines, though, changed the rules of European politics.

[minionofmidas]

It just says that he could have been born in Spain, not that he was.

I'm sticking with Columbus being from Genoa, Italy before anything.

Even though he never visited Italy or never wrote in Italian and was never heard to speak in Italian.

Not that he had much time to do the first one in his later years (and the last one is unprovable.) The traditional Genoese accent is very close to Catalan anyways, a fact that escaped this guy.

Such theories have always existed - I once came across a theory that Columbus was Chinese - but I wouldn't believe them on such flimsy evidence - although I wouldn't want to rule it out quite entirely.