Drink Rum

I had bee in my bonnet (a pretty blue one) about a bit of political correctness that I was going to have a go at today. In doing some research on it, I found a very fascinating bit of trivia that seems to have sort of... um... well... been forgotten or overlooked.

A long time ago, in the late 15th century... Europe was sending people in ships all over the place. One of these people in three of these ships (don't ask me how he did it) landed in the Caribbean and discovered the New World. That man was Christopher Columbus. And as your public school education will tell you, he went home and told Spain all about it and what a great thing he did. And they named the continents after some other guy named Amerigo Vespucci... who no one really ever talks about other than he was also on some ships and sailed around and they named the continents after him.

And to a seventh grader, that's your 20 minute lesson on the birth of a nation. Down the hall in sex ed, they'd teach you about the birth of a baby, and if you were lucky later at the dance that night you might experience the birth of your sex life... which could lead back to the birth of a baby... which leads me back to the birth of a bunch of crap.

First bit of crap is just opinion. I will state it as fact though because my opinions are more reliable than many peoples' facts. Columbus landed in the Caribbean. In the Bahamas. I've been to the Bahamas. If I had a couple of ships (Captain Dorko ran one aground in Cuba) I'd have stayed put in the Bahamas. Screw Spain. Stay in the islands man! I mean, in Spain they called the guy Cristobal Colon. That's a horrible name.

So they named the continents after Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed around the Amerigos many times... so he said. Turns out, he did it twice and then died. He was a big fat liar. One of the people he lied to in 1507 was this German guy whose name I can't spell and am really sure you don't care created a map of the known world and label South America as The Americas. This map is the first known usage of America to describe the continents. North America was labeled as The Indies. So it was a great map. But... it started something. A few years later, people found out that Vespucci was a liar and hadn't done half of what he claimed. And the German map maker removed the term America and replaced it with Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). But it was too late. By the time the new maps were made, people were already calling it America.

So there's your history lesson for today. America... discovered by a mistake... and named for a different one.

Welcome to the United States of Terra Incognita.