Christopher Columbus - Discovery Channel

[Captain Morgana Bloodheart]

I watched "Christoher Columbus, secrets from the Grave" on the Discovery Channel the other evening!!

Very Interesting! Lots of piraty-ness to keep all of ye grinin'!

A group of scientists have strong evidence that Chris Columbus was not Italian and NOT from Italy, but he was most likely a Pirate/Corsair from Spain!

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Thursday, 5 8:00 PM Columbus: Secrets from the Grave

Discovery Channel

Thursday, 5 11:00 PM Columbus: Secrets from the Grave

Discovery Channel

Saturday, 7 12:00 PM Columbus: Secrets from the Grave

Discovery Channel

Check your local listings for times!!!

M. Bloodheart

[blackjohn]

I recorded it onto my hard drive and finally got around to watching it last night. It was a pretty good show, though I did get tired of seeing the same historical vignettes over and over again, and like most shows of its ilk one only really needs to see the last 15 minutes to get the whole story.

Here's a re-cap. SPOILERS ahead...

Their theory... he was not the son of an Italian weaver. He was of noble Catalonian birth. He fought against Spain in a civil war, and thus he cloaked his past in secrecy, as he didn't want his Spanish patrons to know of his rebellious past.

Blackjohn

[queenrogue]

i only caught the very end of the show, interesting theory. my question is if everyone in europe called him Colon or Colom like the show says where did the "bus" part come from??? why are historians always changing names??? like Hernan Cortes who's names always shows up as Hernando Cortez in text books. where did the "do" and "z" come from??? alright enough of my ranting. ARRRRRRRR!

[blackjohn]

Chalk it up to the quirkiness of languages... Lets see... my memory is a bit hazy here so bear with me... in Spanish it was Colon? And in Italian it was Colombo? If so, I can easily picture the Colombo being translated into Latin as Colombus/Columbus.

And then there's the whole issue of illiteracy and non-standardization of spelling...

Blackjohn

[queenrogue]

makes sence.

[blackjohn]

makes sence.

If you've never taken Latin, I highly recommend it. Oddly enough, in reading this bio of Dampier, at one point he uses the Latin he learned as a youth. Being alone and far away in the South Sea, it just so happened that he met with a priest. And the priest knew Latin. It was the only language both had in common. Pretty cool stuff.

Blackjohn

[kass]

Do you know that the reason Irish/Gaelic is so screwed up grammatically is because the first people who wrote the language down in the 6th century were monks whose only other language was Latin. Irish isn't very conducive to the Latin alphabet, but they "made" it work. And it just doesn't. And Irish schoolkids have been suffering ever since.

And just to bring it back to a piratical theme, do you realize that much of what we think of as the "pirate" accent comes from the English of someone whose first language is Irish/Gaelic?

Yay us!

Kass