Happy Happy Happy

Oct. 4-Happy birthday to my wife Sandi.
Oct. 11-Happy 8th birthday to our grandson Cole.
Oct. 12-Happy Columbus Day to one and all.

To see pictures of Sandi & Cole's birthdays (and more) click here: georgeswebpage.com

To learn some interesting trivia about Columbus, read on:

Columbus landed in America, October 12, 1492.

·  Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 and he died in 1506 (aged 54).

·  Columbus was a skilled sailor and navigator.

·  He was certain that the Earth was round. Although this was the view of most scholars and navigators at the time, it was not what most of the people alive in Tudor times believed. Many in the 15th century still thought that the Earth was flat and that it was possible to sail off the edge of the world.

·  Columbus wanted to find an easy way to reach the East Indies (South-east Asia). He decided that the best route would be to travel west from Europe, around the globe. Other navigators had also thought about this option, but they didn’t try it because they thought the distance would be too great.

·  Christopher Columbus struggled to get financial support for his planned westerly voyage. He approached the King of Portugal, John II, in 1485, asking for three ships. He was turned down. Columbus then tried to get funding from Genoa and Venice. They also turned him down. Henry VII, King of England also wasn’t interested in putting money into the voyage. Christopher Columbus finally got the money and ships he needed from Queen Isabella of Spain. This was in 1492

• On 3rd August 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew set sail from Palos de la Frontera in Spain in three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. They stopped at the Canary Islands to restock their provisions before setting sail again on 6th September.
• Land was spotted on 12th October. Columbus named the island, which is located in the Bahamas, San Salvador. Columbus went on to explore the northerly coast of Cuba, Hispaniola and the Samana Peninsula.
• Although Christopher wasn’t the first European to visit the Americas – we now know that the norseman Leif Ericson made a voyage in the 11th century – he was responsible for bringing about lasting links between Europe and the Americas.
• Columbus never believed that he had discovered a ‘new’ continent. He thought that he’d established a new route to the East Indies. For this reason, he called all of the native inhabitants of the island he visited indios, the Spanish for Indians.
• Christopher Columbus finally returned to Spain in March 1493. He was welcomed as a hero and given the titles of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Viceroy of the Indies.
• Columbus made three more voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. He explored the islands of the Lesser Antilles and gave them European names (for example, Antigua and St Kitts).
• He also visited Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Jamaica, Honduras, Nicagragua and Costa Rica.
• Christopher Columbus set up colonies during his voyage, leaving groups of men to form settlements. The largest of these was the one he founded on the island of Hispaniola. Columbus was a poor ruler who often was very harsh and brutal when governing.

The Santa Maria wrecked on Columbus’ historic voyage.
On Christmas Eve of 1492, a cabin boy ran Columbus’s flagship into a coral reef on the northern coast of Hispaniola, near present-day Cap Haitien, Haiti. Its crew spent a very un-merry Christmas salvaging the Santa Maria’s cargo. Columbus returned to Spain aboard the Nina, but he had to leave nearly 40 crewmembers behind to start the first European settlement in the Americas—La Navidad. When Columbus returned to the settlement in the fall of 1493, none of the crew were found alive.

• He initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Columbus' son became the first African slave trader in 1505, according to founder and CEO of the Imagine Institute Eric Kasum.
• Columbus believed he could conquer all of the natives and on his second journey he brought back cannons and attack dogs. One of his men, Bartolome De Las Casas, said he witnessed beheadings, dismemberments and rapes of natives by Columbus' men. De Las Casas stopped working for Columbus and became a priest after witnessing the monstrosities.
• The explorer and his men disrupted the entire economy of three continents. Post-Columbian diseases killed more than three million people within the 50-year span after his arrival in the New World. It is also said Columbus brought syphilis from the New World back to the Old World.
• Columbus never believed he found the New World, he thought it was a new passage to India. He also died thinking he found Asia — a place he had never been.
• Half of his voyages ended in disaster: one of his ships sank, another ship rotted away and at one point his group spent a year lost in Jamaica.