this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Even if you look at him in the best possible light, he's an absolute moron. A lucky one, but still. To the day he died, he still believed he'd reached east Asia. And it wasn't a case of not having the information to know better; he just couldn't fathom being wrong.
Imagine being told you "discovered" (from an Afro-Eurasian perspective) a new continent and just telling everyone you meet "No is the East Indies". Really blurs the line between stubborn and genocidal maniac.
You know, given exactly what he saw during his four voyages, I can kinda see it.
From the deck of a galleon, would you be able to tell the Caribbean islands from the Philippines if you'd never seen either one before? Maybe you'd mistake the Yucatan for Indonesia, and sail up and down the Gulf of Mexico thinking you're in the Gulf of Thailand, except for some reason you just can't find the Singapore Straight.
It's the time he found the Orinoco river delta, correctly deduced that a river that big can't flow from an island, that it has to be from a huge landmass, but...what huge landmass? They didn't know Australia was there, and if they did, he had a quadrant, he knew he was in the Northern hemisphere. Even New Guinea is a stretch given their latitude.
How very American of him
not only that, he was so wrong. people back then didn't just knew that the earth was round, they also knew the size, and knew no ship of the time could voyage westward to asia.
Colombus believed the earth was much smaller, and was told he was an idiot at the time.
he is likely one of the luckiest people alive, as he was going to die (they cross the point of no return, where they didn't have enough supplies to return). If it wasn't for a fucking giant ass continent in the way he would have died and be forgotten in history, except for the occasional short form video about dumbest people in history. or a Matt Parker video about his exact mathematical mistake he did titled (how a geometric mistake killed 89 sailors).
I can just see Queen Isabella agreeing to fund the trip just to get rid of Columbus. "Let's just pay him to go out to sea and die, Ferdinand. He's so fucking annoying." Then he walks into court in 1494 with a tan, a cob of corn and a chili pepper talking about "Hey you got any more of them boats? We went to leave Japan and the Santa Maria wouldn't start, I think it needs a new alternator."
Isabella doesn't have room in her head for this much surprise, confusion and anger at the same time so she's trying to ask him how the fuck he isn't dead but she keeps phrasing it in ways that makes Columbus recount his adventure. Like the first thing out of her mouth is "Where did YOU come from?" And Columbus lists all the islands he visited. Then she says "how did you not starve?" And he talks about provisions running low and then the men eating rope and hunting the ship's rats before they made landfall. It doesn't help that Columbus is Italian (and a bit thick) so Isabella's astonished Spanish isn't fully landing. Ferdinand's over there, got his eyes squeezed shut chuckling into his fist because this is the funniest shit he's seen all month but Isabella must NEVER know this or there'll be no living with her.
Then they send him back out and he commits just...all the atrocities.