Ever wonder why, if Columbus supposedly discovered the Americas, why they're not named after him? Why "America" anyway?
First, let's dispense with Columbus post haste. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you can't "discover" a land where hundreds of thousands of people already lived. Not to mention the fact that the Vikings got to Greenland hundreds of years before Columbus, who tortured the locals so poorly that the King of Spain sent people to arrest him and bring him home in chains. Oh, and syphilis ran rampant in Europe after the first time he came home. Hm . . .
Not long after this "discovery," Amerigo Vespucci realized that Columbus was not in Asia as he'd thought. Instead he was on a new continent. The New World. Cartographer Martin Waldseemuller accidentally thought that meant Vespucci discovered the land and so named it America after him.
Whoops.
And if Columbus brought a bounty of syphilis back, what did Vespucci find in the New World?
Back then he'd noticed the natives chewing coca leaves, which seemed to be a magical substance with curative powers and the ability to keep one's energy up. Fast forward a few hundred years, and it will be known as COCAINE. A new drug from the New World. Generally speaking cocaine was invented in 1859, but now that a couple of 17th Century Milanese mummies have tested positive for cocaine, we now know that Vespucci didn't keep it to himself in South America. Nope. He had to have brought some back. It sounds like he brought back enough to share with everyone. If you want to read about it, here's a great article. It's good to know that "let's do cocaine about it" is a lot older than people think.
History class would be a lot more fun if this kind of thing was taught.
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