Columbus Day

from Virtual Occoquan

Thank You Baby It was just 517 years ago today that Christopher Columbus discovered us, aprox 1:37 PM GMT, on Columbus Day. Talk about synchronicity! (By us, I am talking to my good American readers. The rest of you weren’t discovered until many years later, except for my Canadian readers, who were discovered the very next year by Juan Rodriguez.) Spain, otherwise known as the cradle of Civilization, was well aware of the legend of the French, but refused to discover them or even acknowledge their existence until 1577, when they launched the thirteen day War of the Frenchies, a battle that has been all but been forgotten, perhaps because of the stupidity of the name. Christopher Columbus went on to do many more great things, including the creation of salt, the discovery of Egypt (where he taught the Indians – he called everybody Indians – the ancient Spanish art of hieroglyphics), and inventing the first manual typewriter (a crude device, incapable of printing the tilde). He also established the first government holiday, which he dubbed, with his characteristic absence of humility, Columbus Day. Which is why to this very day we raise our mugs high once a year and shout out “Happy Birthday, Dude!

Above: Earliest know photograph of Christopher Columbus, taken after Queen Isabella refused to increase his grog quota.