COLUMBUS DAY

On this day, the United States celebrates the anniversary of the 1^st wave of European invasion to land on the shores of Turtle Island. Thus began the Big Lie, taught to millions of schoolchildren. 

Cristobel Colon, a former pirate operating against the Spanish crown, got his hands on maps that were obtained from his late father-in-law. His father-in-law, a Portuguese who had spent considerable time in Africa, procured the maps from African sailors who had traveled to lands that lay to the west. Colon posed as a Genoan explorer in order to get funding from the very queen whose ships he had been plundering and sets sail, knowing exactly where he was going. He arrived in the Western Hemisphere (which was already home to upward of 112 million people and included the biggest city on the planet - present-day Mexico City), and is given credit for having “discovered” it. Colon brought with him a host of diseases that ran rampant through the Native population, reducing it by nearly 95%, committed acts of genocide, and began the transatlantic slave trade. 

So today Americans take a day off and hold parades and department store sales in honor of a genocidal killer, slaver, and pirate who was a faux Italian.

Enjoy your holiday.