1492

It was August of 1492.  Christopher Columbus, an explorer from Spain, set sail for the Indies. Little did Columbus know that exactly 500 years later, John Park, a resident of Camarillo, California, would set sail for Ventura College after receiving his driver's license earlier in the month.  

Had someone told Columbus this fact before his ship left the dock on Friday, August 3rd, 1492, I am confident that Columbus would have..........given absolutely no response whatsoever and his journey would have been delayed by approximately 12 seconds.

However, Columbus was determined that his journey would have an impact on people.  Yes, he was looking to find the Indies and probably was not averse to the idea of bringing home some loot, but an excerpt from his diary revealed an additional desire:

"At this time I have seen and put in study to look into all the Scriptures which the Lord has opened to my understanding.
"It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures...
"I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous presence. For the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps. It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied...
"The Lord made me a messenger of the new heavens and the new earth of which Isaiah speaks and St. John in the book of the Revelation. And He showed me the place where to find it..." (1)


And so on that Friday, Columbus knelt down on the dock, received Holy Communion, and embarked on a cruise that would change the world.

There were three cruise ships on this vacation: the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.  


After about a week, they made a stop at the Canary Islands.  Of course, back then - when you stopped at a place, you also discovered it.  I wouldn't have minded staking my claim to Hawaii.  "Aloha!  It's yours."


They remained there a few weeks and departed, continuing to head west.


Now, the university I attended was on the quarter system, where each term was 10 weeks.  And by the end of the 10 weeks, you were ready to pull your hair out.  So, it is no surprise to me that the patience of Columbus's crew finally exhausted itself after...you guessed it...10 weeks.  They threatened mutiny. But just like my Calculus class, the pain and agony would not stretch itself beyond the 10 weeks.  On October 11th, they began to see signs of land, "pieces of wood loaded with barnacles, green bulrushes, and other vegetation." (2)  On October 12th, they saw the Promised Land.  It wasn't actually the Promised Land and it wasn't the land they were even looking for, but after over two months in the ocean, any land is the Promised Land.   And you can't go wrong with the the Bahamas.  Of course, there were no resorts there because like I said, when you arrived at a place, you discovered it.  There were people there however, and Columbus assumed he had reached the East Indies.

So, perhaps because there were no resorts, they continued to sail on.  About two weeks later, they arrived at the Dominican Republic, where they likely spotted the ancestors of many future Major League baseball stars.  By October 28th, they arrived in Cuba.  He eventually called the island Hispaniola and referred to the natives as Indians.  He "hoped to convert them 'to our Holy Faith by love rather than by force' by giving them red caps and glass beads 'and many other things of small value.' (3)


The discovery of things like corn and tobacco, while interesting to Columbus, was not all that exciting to one Martín Alonso Pinzón, who took off with the Pinta looking for gold. So, down to two ships, Columbus continued his journey.  On December 6th, Columbus landed at an island which he named La Isla Espanola or Hispaniola.  It is where modern-day Haiti is located.


On Christmas Eve, two ships became one as the Santa Maria hit a reef and by the next day, had sank. (4)
I'm guessing it was a motivator behind Columbus's decision to make the aforementioned island the site of the first European settlement in the New World.  He called it La Navidad, building a stockade there out of the remnants of the Santa Maria. (5) 


Well, that brings us to the end of 1492.  Somewhere in the world on the evening of December 31st, Dick Clark's ancestors were celebrating the final hours of this historic year and looking forward to another exciting year of discovery.  Of course, it is possible that his ancestors hadn't even heard of Christopher Columbus and/or turned in early that night.



(1) Rick Wood, Mission Frontiers (http://www.missionfrontiers.org/), Sep 01, 1992, Volume 14:9-12. Used by permission of Mission Frontiers.

(2)  A Patriot's History Of The United States (From Columbus's Great Discovery To The War On Terror) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen
Copyright Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, 2004
Published by the Penguin Group
Page 4

(3) A Patriot's History Of The United States (From Columbus's Great Discovery To The War On Terror) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen
Copyright Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, 2004
Published by the Penguin Group
Page 4

(4) http://www.answers.com/topic/1492


(5) http://www.answers.com/topic/1492