Bob Bird: Why Columbus matters in 2026

By BOB BIRD

Oct. 12, 2026 – OK, the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach the Americas. Maybe some Irish monks. No? The natives were here first? Of course!

Who cares? Columbus was the only one whose voyage changed history. The civilizations of American natives were impressive. The Mound Builders of Cahokia, Ohio and other locations were mighty impressive in the medieval era. The Mayas/Aztecs were at their apex of sophistication when the Spaniards arrived.

But none of these civilizations had written records or even the invention of the wheel. I think it is pretty safe to say that if things went in reverse, if by some twist of fate the technology of the Aztecs built ocean-going ships, had beasts of burden better than llamas and dogs, and wheels, had they come to Europe to colonize, there would have been warfare.

We saw that happen in the 1200s when the Mongols reached Russia and eastern Europe, a civilization as much beyond the ken of Christian knowledge and experience as were the Aztecs. It was murderous, nasty, ruthless.

But God in His wisdom and great love for mankind did not allow either the Mongols or the Aztecs to extinguish western civilization. The Spaniards not only were fallen, they were Christians. The priests and bishops who accompanied their soldiers not only converted the natives, but also defended their rights. The Miracle of Guadelupe is still in the hearts of all Latin Americans today.

Conquest is part of fallen human nature. If Columbus and Europeans are currently seen as villains, and deserve to be expunged from history, I would like to remind their detractors that their own advocacy of sexual license, abortion, revolution and the different tyrannical flavors of socialism have piled on more dead bodies than all other wars and genocides combined. The statues of Lenin and Stalin have already been torn down. Margaret Sanger’s statue has already been yanked by Planned Parenthood.

But what made Columbus different? He made a big mistake, and it was a good thing that he did.

He knew that it was only 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, what was then called “The Ocean Sea.” Some of the outlying islands were already discovered: the Azores, Canary and Madeira islands, but no one ventured further. Not because it was thought they would fall off the ends of the earth, but because no ship could carry the supplies necessary to sustain a voyage of 11 or even 12,000 miles.

Say what? Yes, intelligent navigators pretty much knew the planet was round and knew that it was about 8,000 miles in diameter. Extrapolating the curvature of the earth along with the observations afforded during a lunar and solar eclipse proved all of that.

But because Columbus had traveled along the coasts of Portugal, France and had visited Iceland, the stories he picked up all independently matched. Some western European fishermen in France and Portugal, unknown to history, may have blown across the Atlantic, and returned. Along with the Vikings’ aborted colonizations in Newfoundland, Columbus figured out the distance.

When he visited the Portuguese, who were patiently working their way around the African coast to the Indies, he tried to convince them that the world was smaller than calculated. He concluded that the land just 3,000 miles across the Ocean Sea was China, Japan and the vaguely identified “spice islands” — today’s Indonesia and the Philippines. Thus, he concluded that somehow the calculations were wrong and that the planet was smaller than was thought by the experts.

THAT was where people thought he was off his nut.

Columbus failed with the Portuguese, who knew better, and was put on hold by the Spanish. The newly united Spanish throne of Ferdinand and Isabella wanted to conclude the world’s longest war [711-1492], the so-called Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moslems.

It was a close call for the Genoese navigator. Both Columbus and his #1 cheerleader, Queen Isabella, seem to have had the Hand of God on them, dedicated to a singularity of purpose. What did Spain have to lose? Their rival Portuguese had a sure thing going by developing the African coastline as a trade route. If this mercurial Italian was wrong, the expense lost was minimal. But if he was right — well, world history would never again be the same.

Columbus wanted to have his fame and fortune locked down beforehand, and made outlandish and presumptuous demands for title of nobility, “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” and guarantees for his descendants. Never had any explorer been so cheeky, and never had any nation been so fortunate in realizing the returns.

Columbus has been memorialized in countless ways in the naming of cities and nations, the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and in rivers and provinces. One greatly overlooked honor, however, was naming the New World for a different, and far less worthy, Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci. We really ought to be the continents of North and South Columbia, and the United States of Columbia.

But don’t tell Donald Trump. Enough of the renaming, please Mr. President.

Conservative talk radio host Bob Bird anchors the “Talk of the Kenai” show for KSRM, and was named the 2025 Broadcaster of the Year by the Alaska Broadcasters Association. He was chairman of the former Alaskan Independence Party.