Circumference of the World (cont.)

So now that we have established that the circumference of the World is only 25,000 miles and that the space shuttle orbits the earth every 90 minutes, it is time to talk about our boy Christopher Columbus.

You know many of the great minds have been getting a bum wrap lately. Mainly by the elite media. Shakespeare came from simple parents, so there is no way he could have written all those wonderful plays.

Leonard da Vinci also came from a simple Mom, a bastard. He had no schooling. How could he have come up with all those ideas.

Einstein was also born into a simple family and was a simple patent officer when he started with many of his great ideas. He even failed Geometry.

And Christopher Columbus was a fool who got lost and thought he landed in the Indies. And he killed all the native indians, etc as the stories goes these days.

Well we know for sure that all those captains sailing out of Europe and around the South African tip on the way to India knew not only that the world was round, but also that the world was 25,000 miles around.

Christopher Columbus had TWO brilliant ideas.

1. He figured out that in order to make it across the Atlantic Ocean one had to follow the trade winds we see on TV every summer in Florida as we track the hurricanes coming from Africa.

2. He gambled that there had to be some land mass between Europe and Asia going West from Europe. He knew he did not have enough supplies to make it all the way around the 25,000 mile earth to India (or 21,000 miles according to modern flight plans from Spain to India).

So why does history picture him as an idiot ? Mainly because he is an Italian sailing out of Spain. I am sure the Italians do NOT think of him as an idiot and i know the hispanic culture also think of him as one of the greatest of all time.

So we can all agree that he was an educated man. And we can all agree he knew the world was round and about 25,000 miles around.

We also know from records that his three ships were out of supplies when it landed in the Cuban islands. So we know that he only had supplies for a 4,000 mile trip. Definitely NOT a 21,000 mile trip without fresh water.

Why is it so hard for the elite of education and textbook writers to understand that ?

The problem lies in the fact that in order to get more money from the Crown of Spain, he had to tell them he had found the West Indies. And that there was gold and silver there and silk, etc.

It is amazing he made 4 cross Atlantic trips before he died.

By the way, it is said that it was Benjamin Franklin who discovered that it was quicker to travel back to Europe by going by Iceland and riding the Gulf Streams that go up the East Coast of America and back down to Europe.

"Columbus had expected the voyage to take four weeks, but that deadline came and went without sighting land. The crews of his ships became restless and some argued that a return to Spain was in order. On October 10, Columbus struck a deal with his men: if no land was found in the next three days, they would turn back for Spain. At two hours past midnight on October 12, land was sighted by Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez), a sailor aboard the Pinta.

Columbus went ashore the next morning at an island he called San Salvador, which the natives called Guanahani." http://www.columbusnavigation.com/v1.shtml