It is also true that his world-changing achievements led to devastation for the people who were here already.
So, uh, why is this a US holiday again?
Is the life of this man worth celebrating?
Lets consider the history.
Columbus, a Genoese explorer, was sailing under the Spanish flag in hopes of colonizing the new world.
Well, here are three reasons.
Its hard to say for certain, but the world could have been very different if Columbus hadnt succeeded.
Lets be clear: Columbus did not discover America.
So why arent we celebrating John Cabot day every year?
SimpleCabot sailed under the English flag.
Both Columbus and Cabot were largely minor characters of history for hundreds of years after their deaths.
But fast forward to the newly independent American colonies in 1776, and things have changed.
AsBrian Handwerk at Smithsonian Magazine explains, American colonists needed a heroic symbol for their newly born nation.
But as Handwerk puts it, Cabot sailed under an inconvenient flag.
Nobody in the newly independent United States wanted to associate themselves with an explorer who worked for the British.
