History of Christopher Columbus: Why Do We Observe Columbus Day?
The man who sailed from Spain to discover America was neither Spanish nor did he discover America, at least not the mainland. But it was true that:
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Origin of Christopher Columbus
He was actually Italian, born in 1451 to a wool merchant in Genoa, and first went to sea in his youth. He sailed to Iceland and Guinea for business and later may have spent some time as a privateer. It was in 1484, the year after Martin Luther was born in Germany, that Christopher Columbus presented to King John of Portugal the idea of an “Enterprise of the Indies” (no relation to Star Trek‘s starship) where he would sail west to the East Indies, thinking it shorter than the eastern spice trade route.
After unsuccessful appeals to the kings of Portugal, England, and France, he eventually moved to Spain; after that, his fourth request; he secured the patronage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. You know them as the parents of Queen Katherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England, and grandparents of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who presided over the trial of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.
