The Man Who Proved Nothing
Christopher Columbus didn’t prove the world was round.
We knew that almost as soon as we knew how to think.
Look up.
That’s what our ancestors did.
They saw round stars, round planets, round moons — everything moving in circles. The heavens themselves were screaming: this is how the universe works.
And if that wasn’t enough, the ocean finished the lesson.
Stand on a shore and watch a boat sail away.
You don’t see the whole thing just get smaller like a drawing on a flat page.
You watch it disappear hull first, then the mast, then the sail.
That only happens on a curved surface. If the Earth were flat, the whole ship would just shrink into a dot and fade.
The horizon itself is proof.
We’ve known the Earth was round since long before anyone thought to write it in a book. We didn’t need Columbus to prove it. We already had boats and eyes.
Copernicus comes along and says the sun is at the center. None of this was meant to be up for debate. The debate came later — mostly from people who preferred power over truth.
And Columbus?
He wasn’t some misunderstood genius with a brave new theory. He actually believed — drunkenly, I’d wager — that the Earth was shaped like an egg.
An egg.
And that if he sailed along the “thinner” part, he could shave distance off the trip to Asia. Not bold. Not brilliant. Just wrong.
But the king of Spain was curious. Maybe bored. Maybe drunk too. So Columbus gets his commission — not a grand fleet, just three ships. A discount expedition.
If the king had really believed in him, he’d have handed him an armada.
Instead, Columbus got three barely decent boats and a pat on the head.
And even then, he didn’t ride in front like some brave leader.
He put himself in the middle — protected from two sides.
Give that man two more ships and I’ll give you one guess where his would sit. Dead center, wrapped in other people’s courage.
Then comes the biggest lie of all:
He didn’t discover America.
He never set foot on what is now the United States.
He landed in the Bahamas, massacred the people who were already living there, brought disease, terror, and ruin, and then spent the rest of his life wandering around the Caribbean like a man who lost the plot and refused to admit it.
He wasn’t the first to cross the Atlantic either.
The Vikings had already done it centuries before.
And if Columbus hadn’t sailed when he did, someone else would have. Maybe someone better. Maybe not. But someone.
Columbus was, at best, a historical footnote.
A man full of ambition and greed, not wisdom or vision.
He didn’t change the world because of his genius — he blundered into a continent that happened to be in the way of his bad math.
So what’s all the fuss about this man who was so much less than we were all told?
It all comes down to a writer who was down on his luck and needed a quick buck.
Washington Irving.
Yeah — the Sleepy Hollow guy.
Biographies were a hot seller. So he picked someone nobody was really paying attention to and, with barely any research and no real concern for the truth, wrote one of the greatest fictions ever told: a heroic life of Christopher Columbus.
He didn’t uncover a hero. He invented one.
He made Columbus a legend for money and fame.
And in a new country where education was thin and books were scarce, this fiction about a man who was less than ordinary became truth. It became identity. It became part of what it meant to be “American.”
Statues were cast.
Holidays declared.
Cities, towns, and streets named.
And schools. God help us — schools.
We named schools after one of the least educated men in the story.
This bullshit made it into textbooks and then into hearts. And here’s the problem: once a lie becomes identity, it’s almost impossible to root out. No matter how poisonous, how rancid, how obviously fabricated it is — people will cling to it because it’s no longer just about facts. It’s about who they think they are.
And while America still celebrates a man who had nothing to do with the founding of their nation, the rest of us are tearing down the legacy of a man who was one of the least of us.
The Bahamians see his legacy clearly: terror, destruction, slavery, and death.
They tore down his statue — and they started with the head.
Because when the people start tearing statues down, you’d better get out of the way. That’s not “cancel culture.” That’s history correcting itself in public.
And if you think I’m crazy, if you think I’m wrong,
if Columbus is your hero?
I’m sorry — you’re wrong.
But you’ve got fingers and a phone.
Fact Check Me.
Tell me I’m wrong.