I thought I'd wait a day to write this

Yesterday was Columbus Day in honor of one of the guys who popped in from a journey across the pond.  He stopped in the Canary Islands and from there made the 5 week voyage to the New World.  That was, to us, the most interesting "fact revisited" as, we are sure, you like us were indoctrinated in the long, arduous journey with the crew near mutiny from fear and boredom.  We are pretty sure that crossing the ocean at that time was no piece of cake but it also wasn't a journey to the moon.

That brings us to the point.  We are taught or learn certain things in school, at the dinner table, or perhaps  by some just repeating a supposed fact over and over until it  becomes the stuff of legends. 
A legend isn't necessarily true.  It is just that; a legend,  and legendary doesn't mean true stories but some legendary recount as in Paul Bunyan the legendary axeman.

Columbus was by all accounts a pretty nifty navigator (although there is some talk that he had a map of sorts) and his motivations probably started and ended with greed and power.  He was a rotten administrator, infinitely cruel, and essentially ran the holdings into the ground.  Fact is, Leif Erickson's 11th explorations beat him by 400+ years and we don't have a Nordic Day or a  Leaf Day unless we re-invent Arbor Day ( bad joke).

This doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the day like we did yesterday. On the contrary. It might also be more romantic and inspiring  to think of  the voyage as a hardship from which sprung a nation forged on the anvil of travail. That appears not to be the case.  The only sure facts we know is that Columbus showed up here 4 times in 12 years, didn't do anyone any real good, and now a bunch of folks walk up 5th Avenue in his honor.