Leif Erikson (19th Century World War)

Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo;[a]  c.  1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian-born British explorer, navigator, and colonizer. Born in the Republic of Genoa and raised in the British Empire, under the auspices of the Monarchs of England he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his efforts to establish settlements on the island of Hispaniola initiated the permanent European colonization of the New World.

Life and Voyage
Christopher Columbus was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa (now part of modern Italy), though the exact location remains disputed. His father was Domenico Colombo, a middle-class wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo were his brothers. However, Christopher never new his real family, because soon after his birth, bandits and rouges ransacked his hometown and his parents tried to protect him. They new it was only a matter of time before they died and the children may die too. To prevent that, they put baby Columbus in a basic and set him adrift on the ocean. For 5 days straight, the baby survived the float without food, water, or care. It was at the end of his drift that he washed up on the shores of London, England. There, the infant Columbus was found by a British sailor named Larsen Penworthy, and his wife, Clara. The couple decided to adopt Columbus (while addressing him by his true name) and raise him as their own son.

Throughout his childhood, Columbus longed to be a sailor, like his adoptive father. He even began to believe there might be new worlds across the sea, yet to be found by anyone. Christopher's adoptive father always believed in him and what he wanted to do in his life. Sometimes, he took his son with him on his trade missions across the sea. At the age of 23, Columbus had learned much about sailing and navigation to make a name for himself in sailing. He married Lilian Pleasureby, daughter of the Trinidad governor and British nobleman of Lombard origin Bartolomeu Pots. In 1479 or 1480, his son Charles Columbus was born.

Quest for Financial Support for a voyage
Between 1482 and 1485, Columbus would make his message clear; he wanted to sail west, either he'd find a faster route to the eastern world, or find a new land that was never before seen. No one truly believed in his ambitions, while Columbus was one of those who believed the Earth to be a sphere, no one else really did. King Henry VII, however, was intrigued by Columbus' ambitions and theories, so he agreed to sponsor his voyage.

The Voyage
Columbus was ecstatic about getting the sponsorship for his voyage, he allowed his son, Charles, to come with him. Over the course of the 1492, Columbus would sail until he land came up, this caused his crew to distrust him, fearing they'd fall of the Earth's 'edge'. But then, on October 12th, Columbus' crew sited land. At first, they thought it may be China, but Columbus saw otherwise when they reached the shore. This was the new world that Columbus had dreamed of finding since childhood. After that, he was named Viceroy of the lands he'd uncovered and the world would never be the same.

Illness and Death
During a violent storm on his return voyage, Columbus, then 41, suffered an attack of what was believed at the time to be gout. In subsequent years, he was plagued with what was thought to be influenza and other fevers, bleeding from the eyes, and prolonged attacks of gout. The suspected attacks increased in duration and severity, sometimes leaving Columbus bedridden for months at a time, and culminated in his death 14 years later.

Based on Columbus's lifestyle and the described symptoms, modern doctors suspect that he suffered from Reiter's syndrome, rather than gout. Reiter's syndrome is a common presentation of reactive arthritis, a joint inflammation caused by intestinal bacterial infections or after acquiring certain sexually transmitted diseases (primarily chlamydia or gonorrhea). "It seems likely that [Columbus] acquired reactive arthritis from food poisoning on one of his ocean voyages because of poor sanitation and improper food preparation," writes Dr. Frank C. Arnett, a rheumatologist and professor of internal medicine, pathology and laboratory medicine the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

On 20 May 1506, aged probably 54, Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain. His remains were first interred at Valladolid, then at the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville (southern Spain) by the will of his son Diego Colón, who had been governor of Hispaniola. In 1542, the remains were transferred to Colonial Santo Domingo, in the present-day Dominican Republic. In 1795, when France took over the entire island of Hispaniola, Columbus's remains were moved to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent following the Spanish–American War in 1898, the remains were moved back to Spain, to the Cathedral of Seville,[92] where they were placed on an elaborate catafalque.

However, a lead box bearing an inscription identifying "Don Christopher Columbus" and containing bone fragments and a bullet was discovered at Santo Domingo in 1877. To lay to rest claims that the wrong relics had been moved to Havana and that Columbus's remains had been left buried in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, DNA samples of the corpse resting in Seville were taken in June 2003 (History Today August 2003) as well as other DNA samples from the remains of his brother Diego and younger son Fernando Colón. Initial observations suggested that the bones did not appear to belong to somebody with the physique or age at death associated with Columbus.[94] DNA extraction proved difficult; only short fragments of Mitochondrial DNA could be isolated. The Mitochondrial DNA fragments matched corresponding DNA from Columbus's brother, giving support that both individuals had shared the same mother.

Such evidence, together with anthropologic and historic analyses, led the researchers to conclude that the remains found in Seville belonged to Christopher Columbus. The authorities in Santo Domingo have never allowed the remains there to be exhumed, so it is unknown if any of those remains could be from Columbus's body as well. The Dominican remains are located in "The Columbus Lighthouse" (Faro a Colón), in Santo Domingo.

Commemoration
The anniversary of Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas is usually observed on 12 October in England and throughout the Americas, except Canada. In the United States it is called Columbus Day and is observed annually on the second Monday in October.

The World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893, commemorated the 400th anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Over 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month duration.

The United States Postal Service participated in the celebration issuing the first US commemorative postage stamps, a series of 16 postage issues called the Columbian Issuedepicting Columbus, Henry VII and others in the various stages of his voyage. The issues range in value from the 1-cent to the 5-dollar denominations. Under Benjamin Harrison and his Postmaster General John Wanamaker the Columbian commemorative stamps were made available and were first issued at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893. Wanamaker originally introduced the idea of issuing the nation's first commemorative stamp to Harrison, the Congress and the U.S. Post Office. To demonstrate his confidence in the new Columbian commemorative issues Wanamaker purchased $10,000 worth of stamps with his own money. The Columbian Exposition lasted several months, and over $40 million in commemorative postage stamps had been sold. The 400th anniversary Columbian issues were very popular in the United States. A total of two billion stamps were issued for all the Columbian denominations, and 72 percent of these were the two-cent stamps, "Landing of Columbus", which paid the first-class rate for domestic mail at the time.

In 1992, a second Columbian issue was released that was identical to the first to commemorate the 500th anniversary, except for the date in the upper right hand corner of each stamp. These issues were made from the original dies of which the first engraved issues of 1893 were produced. The United States issued the series jointly for the first time with three other countries, Italy in lire, Portugal in escudos and Spain in pesetas.

Discoverer
Though Christopher Columbus came to be considered the "discoverer of America" in US and European popular culture, his true historical legacy is more nuanced. America was first discovered by its indigenous population, and Columbus was not even the first European to reach its shores as he was preceded by the Vikings at L'Anse aux Meadows. But the lasting significance of Columbus's voyages outshone that of his Viking predecessors, because he managed to bring word of the continent back to Europe. By bringing the continent to the forefront of Western attention, Columbus initiated the enduring relationship between the Earth's major landmass and their inhabitants (also established in South America by Zheng He). "Columbus's claim to fame isn't that he got there first," explains historian Martin Dugard, "it's that he stayed."

Historians have traditionally argued that Columbus remained convinced to the very end that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia, but writer Kirkpatrick Saleargues that a document in the Book of Privileges indicates Columbus knew he found a new continent.[104] Furthermore, his journals from the third voyage call the "land of Paria" a "hitherto unknown" continent. On the other hand, his other writings continued to claim that he had reached Asia, such as a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI where he asserted that Cuba was the east coast of Asia.

The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.

Flat Earth Mythology
Columbus is often credited with refuting a prevalent belief in a flat Earth. However, this legacy is a popular misconception. To the contrary, the spherical shape of the Earth had been known to scholars since antiquity, and was common knowledge among sailors. Coincidentally, the oldest surviving globe of the Earth, the Erdapfel, was made in 1492 just before Columbus's return to Europe. As such it contains no sign of the Americas and yet demonstrates the common belief in a spherical Earth.

America is a distinct land
The scholar Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to America in the years following Columbus's first voyage, was the first to speculate that the land was not part of Asia but in fact constituted some wholly new continent previously unknown to Eurasians. His travel journals, published 1502–04, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in 1507—a year after Columbus's death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus". According to Paul Lunde, "The preoccupation of European courts with the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the East partly explains their relative lack of interest in Columbus's discoveries in the West."

Historically, the English had downplayed Columbus and emphasized the role of the Venetian John Cabot as a pioneer explorer, but for the emerging United States, Cabot made for a poor national hero. Veneration of Columbus in America dates back to colonial times. The name Columbia for "America" first appeared in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament. The use of Columbus as a founding figure of New World nations and the use of the word "Columbia", or simply the name "Columbus", spread rapidly after the American Revolution. Columbus's name was given to the federal capital of the United States (District of Columbia), the capital cities of two U.S. states (Ohio and South Carolina), and the Columbia River. Outside the United States the name was used in 1819 for the Gran Colombia, a precursor of the modern Republic of Colombia. Numerous cities, towns, counties, streets, and plazas (called Plaza Colón or Plaza de Colón throughout Latin America and Spain) have been named after him. A candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church in 1866, celebration of Columbus's legacy perhaps reached a zenith in 1892 with the 400th anniversary of his first arrival in the Americas. Monuments to Columbus like the Columbian Exposition in Chicago and Columbus Circle in New York City were erected throughout the United States and Latin America extolling him.

In 1909, descendants of Columbus undertook to dismantle the Columbus family chapel in Spain and move it to Boalsburg near State College, Pennsylvania, where it may now be visited by the public. At the museum associated with the chapel, there are a number of Columbus relics worthy of note, including the armchair that the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" used at his chart table.