this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Explanation: Christopher Columbus, who was a genocidal, slaving shithead, never realized he found a new landmass. His famous expedition was based on faulty calculations - presuming that the Earth was ~2/3s the size it actually was, contrary to contemporary knowledge (which had accurately known the rough size of the Earth since the 3rd century BCE) - and when he landed, he thought he had landed on the outskirts of fucking India (hence the term 'Indians' for Native Americans).
Despite making several more trips, Columbus went to his deathbed believing that he had found a route to India and just needed to root around a little more to find a spot with all the spices and polities that Europe was vaguely familiar with - a notion that the contemporary Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, from whom we get the term 'America', pretty roundly refuted.
He didn't think it was India, but he thought it was an archipelago at the end of the West Indies, which at the time was what we called nowadays east Asia.
He was looking for a way into Zipangu (Japan) though he thought he had made land way before Japan (as you explain his understanding from earth's circumference was wrong), he thought this was land beyond Japan.
He was still a piece of shit, he didn't think he was in India, all the inhabitants in the Indies (current Indic Ocean) were called Indians.
Hence why I said "on the outskirts of India" - Columbus believed he was roughly in Indonesia, which is why he kept sailing west on later expeditions (running up against the mainland Central and South America in the process) in the hopes of hitting India.
He should have gone through the Panama Canal and kept going!
It was the GPS fault!
^^^ How to say "you didn't fully read my post" without saying "you fully didn't read my post".
Side note: He was trying to finance the end of the world.
Bruh, my response was pointing out that my explanation was sound - I specifically said, in my original comment, "outskirts of India" and "route to India", which is what I emphasized, rather than literally finding or being in India.
I'm sorry that you didn't read my original comment closely before responding.
I was saying it amicably while also admitting I didn't fully read your comment. Not blue on blue here. :)