Why do we celebrate Columbus Day? The Vikings were in America two hundred years before Columbus?

Answer 1

I think it's celebrated out of habit more than anything...there's a theory, that Washington Irvings (the guy who wrote - "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle") "biography" of Christopher Columbus, "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" which was a dramatic and embellished account of the discovery of America, was so popular that over the years it became accepted as fact.

Answer 2

Yes, and there were Native Americans living here even before the Vikings. So, in honesty, we should be celebrating their discovery of North and South America like 100,000 years ago.

The reason we celebrate Columbus however is not because he was the first but because he was the first to really open up the new world to Europe and the rest of the world. That's why.

have a nice day.

Answer 3

Because for years Columbus was who was thought to have discovered America and people hate to let go of traditions. You do realize many places because the native Americans have complained no longer recognize and especially do not celebrate the occurrence. What are you going to say if they prove the Chinese were first? They do believe that to be true and think they have proof. Have you heard about the Kennewick Man? I found it very interesting and have included several sites. I hope this answers your question. God Bless you and the Southern People.

Answer 4

A secret remains a secret until it is revealed. You are right The Vikings were in America before Columbus but their expedition had no relevance to the development of world events and knowledge of existence of the continent remained unknown to European people until Columbus' arrival.

Answer 5

We could even say the members of the 'First Nations' discovered America! However Colombus' distinction was that he introduced Amercia to Europe. Colonization began, and the natural wealth of America began to go to Europe. A new era began with him. It would be normal for people of the First Nations not to be interested in celebrating Colombus Day, but those of us of European descent owe him a debt, whether he was a good man or not (depending on which biography we read, I suppose).

Answer 6

undesirable year for Spain. The Inquisition desperate that Spain could replace into an all Catholic u . s . a .. Jews and Muslims had till the top of July 1492 to get out. i think of i will bypass.

Answer 7

Columbus had a better spin doctor.

Answer 8

i say we should have viking day, nobody cares about boring ol columbus, we could have viking pride parades with men dressed as vikings and whatnot

Answer 9

because columbus's voyage resulted in the colonization of the americas... he was a terrible man but we choose to glorify him...

Answer 10

becuase some idiots decided that they would lie in all of the hostory textbooks and say he was the first europein in america and that he discoverd that the earth was round (greeks knew that like 2000 years before he was born)

Columbus Day is a national holiday. But it's also a good
time to confront the mythology about the heroic explorer who
"discovered" America.

Columbus had a crew of 90, four of whom were criminals. The criminals were promised pardons on their return. Columbus had a hard time getting sailors to go with him, because most thought his voyage was crazy.


Columbus' voyage has even less meaning for North Americans than for South Americans because Columbus never set foot on our continent, nor did he open it to European trade. Scandinavian Vikings already had settlements here in the eleventh century, and British fisherman probably fished the shores of Canada for decades before Columbus.

Contrary to popular legend, Columbus did not prove that the world was round; educated people had known that for centuries. The Egyptian-Greek scientist Erastosthenes, working for Alexandria and Aswan, already had measured the circumference and diameter of the world in the third century B.C. Arab scientists had developed a whole discipline of geography and measurement, and in the tenth century A.D., Al Maqdisi described the earth with 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude.

Columbus did not set sail to prove the world was round. He set sail to find gold, spices, and silks, and other riches in Asia. when he did not find that stuff, Columbus decided to pay for his voyage in the one important commodity he had found in ample supply - human lives. He seized 1,200 Taino Indians from the island of Hispaniola, crammed as many onto his ships as would fit and sent them to Spain, where they were paraded naked through the streets of Seville and sold as slaves in 1495. Columbus tore children from their parents, husbands from wives. On board Columbus' slave ships, hundreds died; the sailors tossed the Indian bodies into the Atlantic. Because Columbus captured more Indian slaves than he could transport to Spain in his small ships, he put them to work in mines and plantations which he, his family and followers created throughout the Caribbean. His marauding band hunted Indians for sport and profit - beating, raping, torturing, killing, and then using the Indian bodies as food for their hunting dogs. Within four years of Columbus' arrival on Hispaniola, his men had killed or exported one-third of the original Indian population of 300,000. Within another 50 years, the Taino people had been made extinct [editor's note: the old assumption that the Taino became extinct is now open to serious question] - the first casualties of the holocaust of American Indians. The plantation owners then turned to the American mainland and to Africa for new slaves to follow the tragic path of the Taino. Historians estimate that half of the Indians on Haiti -- as many as 125,000 people -- were dead within a few years. Virtually all were dead within two generations.


I also wonder why we honor Christopher Columbus, who opened the Atlantic slave trade and launched one of the greatest waves of genocide known in history.