However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets.
Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Columbus Day is a U. It was unofficially celebrated in a number of cities and states as early as the 18th century, but did not become a More than years after he "discovered" the New World—kicking off centuries of exploration and colonization of the Americas—Christopher Columbus is honored with a federal holiday on the second Monday of every October.
However, as historians have continued to dig into the life Christopher Columbus has long been exalted as a heroic figure in American history: the first explorer to establish a European presence in the New World. Americans have celebrated his arrival as far back as , the th anniversary of his landing. But it would take almost Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so.
As early as the sixth century B. In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan c. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters.
A decade later, he was serving as governor of the eastern province of Hispaniola when he decided to explore a nearby island, which became John Cabot or Giovanni Caboto, as he was known in Italian was an Italian explorer and navigator who may have developed the idea of sailing westward to reach the riches of Asia while working for a Venetian merchant. Though the exact details of his life and expeditions are the He was 60 years old. Today, visitors to the site of the accident can see a At p.
Navy destroyer that was refueling at Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed and 38 wounded in the attack, which was carried out by The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates.
These famous public fields were named Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew, and the two-day mission was also the first flight performed without On October 12, , three bombings shatter the peace in the town of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali.
The blasts, the work of militant Islamist terrorists, left people dead and more than others injured, many with severe burns. The attacks shocked residents and those Private First Class Desmond T. When called on by his country to fight in Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Racial violence flares aboard U. Navy ships on October 12, Forty six sailors are injured in a race riot involving more than sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk en route to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam.
The incident broke out when a Black On October 12, , a lovesick Thomas Jefferson composes a romantic and introspective letter to a woman named Maria Cosway. Cosway was born to English parents With his oversized glasses, bowl haircut and down vest, he was an unlikely fashion icon, Many species of animals - the woolly mammoth, mastodon, scimitar cat, Arctic camel, brown bear, moose, muskox, and horse — to name a few — moved from one continent to the other across the Bering land bridge.
Birds, fish, and marine mammals established migration patterns that continue to this day. And archaeologists say that humans followed, in a never-ending hunt for food, water and shelter. Once here, humans dispersed all across North and eventually Central and South America. Up until the s, these first Americans had a name: the Clovis peoples. They get their name from an ancient settlement discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, dated to over 11, years ago.
And DNA suggests they are the direct ancestors of nearly 80 percent of all indigenous people in the Americas. But there's more. Today, it's widely believed that before the Clovis people, there were others, and as Bawaya says, "they haven't really been identified.
We call them, for lack of a better name, the Pre-Clovis people. And to make things more complicated, recent discoveries are threatening to push back the arrival of humans in North America even further back in time. Perhaps as far back as 20, years or more. But the science on this is far from settled. So for now, the Clovis and the Pre-Clovis peoples, long disappeared but still existent in the genetic code of nearly all native Americans, deserve the credit for discovering America.
But those people arrived on the western coast. What about arrivals from the east? Was Columbus the first European to glimpse the untamed, verdant paradise that America must have been centuries ago?
There is proof that Europeans visited what is now Canada about years before Columbus set sail. They were Vikings, and evidence of their presence can be found on the Canadian island of Newfoundland at a place called l'Anse Aux Meadows. Today the area is barren, but a thousand years ago there were trees everywhere and the area likely was used as winter stopover point, where Vikings repaired their boats and sat out bad weather.
It's not quite clear if the area was a permanent settlement, but it is clear that the expansion-minded Norsemen were here long before Columbus. And to add one fascinating wrinkle to the story of America's discover, consider the Sweet Potato. Yes, that's right the sweet potato. This humble pinkish-red tuber is native to South America.
0コメント