Dear Readers,
October, the month your “Italian Connection” usually devotes to Christopher Columbus. Discovery Celebration related matters are being downsized a bit this year, therefore, I thought I would share some other October dates of general interest in addition to our longtime October honoree Christopher Columbus and his Discovery of America, October 12, 1492:
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
The eldest son of Domenico and Suzanna Fontanarossa, Columbus was born in Genoa circa 1451. According to early records he studied astronomy, geometry and cosmography at the University of Pavia and did many things as a young man. He went to sea and worked in his family’s weaving business. However, it soon became apparent that his first love was the sea!
In his early years he visited England, Iceland, Ireland and countless ports in the Mediterranean. There is some factual evidence that he may have visited ports and islands along the west coast of Africa.
He married Felipa Mofiiz di Perestrello, the daughter of a naval captain in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, in 1478. For some years Columbus made his living making maps both of the land masses and seas then known.
In time, after correspondence with Paolo Toscanelli, a Florentine physician and cosmographer he began to feel that the world was a sphere. He conceptualized sailing westward from Europe to the orient. He had envisioned the world to be smaller than it is. He had no concept or idea that an entire hemisphere stood between Europe and the East. He decided he would try to sail westward to prove his theory.
Following the passing of his wife, Columbus, now a widower, presented his thesis of a round earth. As we school children learned, Columbus finally received support and approval for his mission from the Spanish Court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. His departure took place from Palos in southern Spain on August 3, 1492 for parts unknown!
The three ships used carried a total of 88 men. The flag ship was the Santa Maria with a crew of 52 men commanded by Columbus, himself. The Pinta s carried a crew of 18, with Martin Pinzon as captain. The third ship, the Nina, carried a crew of 18 with Vincent Yanez as captain.
History tells the story in many ways. The voyage was long and harrowing. The threat of mutiny and despair of the crews have been told and retold. Nevertheless they persevered and crossed the Atlantic.
Eventually on the morning of October 12, 1492 a seaman on the Nina, Rodrigo de Triana, was the first to spot land! The rest, as they say, is history!
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October 1909
The nation’s railroads have become enormous, earning $3 billion in the last year. More will be spent on railroad ties in the US next year than England and Germany will spend on warships, and they consume one-third of the output of the nation’s steel mills. New locomotives will cost more than the maintenance of the English army, and the total wealth of American railroads exceeds the total national wealth of Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland combined.
October 1980
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site is established in Atlanta. The locales of specific import are his birthplace, church, and grave. Also today, the Boston African American National Historic Site is created. Fifteen pre-Civil War black historical structures are linked by the Black Heritage Trail. Included along the trail is the oldest standing black church in the US and a memorial to the Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the first regiment of African-American troops from a free state. He was killed leading his troops during an assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863.
October 1920
Income and other internal revenue collected by the US during the recently ended fiscal year amount to $5.4 billion.
October 1913
Due to the magic of electricity, President Wilson presses a button in the White House that detonates eight tons of dynamite in Central America, destroying the Gamoa Dike and opening the Panama Canal to commercial shipping.
October 1906
After a great deal of maneuvering, including the creation of an independent Panama, the US may work on completing the Panama Canal, begun by the French. Invitations for contractor bids are sent out by the Canal Commission today with the provision that the successful bidder must be responsible for the entire job. Four months before Congress finally decided that it should be a lock-type rather than a sea-level canal. The US Government will retain control of all engineering, and the connection between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans will be completed under the U.S. Army Engineers 1914.
October 1780
Congress calls on the existing states to cede their westernmost claims to the nation in order to create new states.
October 1909
President William Howard Taft, on a tour of the West, visits the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees in the Yosemite Valley. There to greet the party was 97 year-old Galen Clark, a native of New Hampshire, who discovered the giant trees when the state was yet a wilderness in 1857 and now lives among them. Clark, who named the Mariposa Grove, has selected his burial site in Yosemite, and around it has planted four tiny Sequoia giganteas, which could stand for thousands of years after he is gone.
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