Petition calls for statue of Christopher Columbus in Ohio city to be replaced with Chef Boyardee
The city is Cleveland and it’s actually not a bad idea. Ettore Boiardi was an immigrant success story.
@MitchWagner I still don’t understand why Columbus has statues in the US. He never landed on the continent and thought he landed in India. Heck, India should have statues thanking him for losing his way.
@pratik I was wondering this afternoon what Columbus accomplished, other than taking slaves and killing people. He certainly did not discover the New World, which was already inhabited. Were his expeditions milestones for even the Europeans?
@odd Wikipedia says he opened the route to America for Europe, which sound reasonable and is a great accomplishment.
Still, even his contemporaries thought he was an asshole.
And opening America to the Europeans wasn't such a great deal for Americans at the time.
"1491" is a mind-blowing book, at least for an American.
@MitchWagner I haven’t read it, but thanks for letting me know about it! I must admit I’m blank on big chunks of history, and I guess I have a euro centric, (read Nordic) view from history lessons. I’d be interested in reading 1491, but I have a huge pile to get trough before I can get to it. 📚
@odd 1491 may be less interesting to non-Americans.
As Americans we were taught in school that the Native Americans were savages. In reality, according to this book, more recent research shows that Native Americans had sophisticated societies, with technologies in many ways more advanced than Europe. The native population was healther and had more comfortable homes than Europeans. We know this because the European colonists and visitors of that time said so themselves!
@MitchWagner Interesting. In my 70s-80s elementary school we were presented a more nuanced view than that, but even then they ran 50s American cowboy movies in cinemas here, and there of course they were portrayed as savages or cowards/stupid people. ☹️