Columbus was a moron ... and a villain

"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

When I was a kid in school, I learned the standard story of Christopher Columbus. But as I grew up, I began to rethink the legacy of this "hero".

He was a moron:

• He was so wrong about the circumference of the world.We don't live on a miniature sphere.
• He thought he was in India. Maybe his first clue should have been that the people didn't look like people from India. Nor did they speak any of the languages from there.

His accomplishments were overblown:

• He didn't discover anything. There were people there already.
• He wasn't even the first European to reach the Americas. Vikings beat him by 500 years.

He was a villain:

• He ushered in centuries of imperialism, cultural genocide, religious brainwashing and, oh yeah, he revitalized the slave trade.

Quite a hero, weren't you, Chris?