It is Talk Show Wednesday and today Joebar welcomed another great guest - Christopher Columbus.
Mr. Columbus was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization of the "New World".
He shared with the audience that he was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. He began his career as a young seaman in the Portuguese merchant marine.
It has been said that he was intelligent and ambitious, and eventually learned Latin, as well as Portuguese and Castilian, and read widely about astronomy, geography, and history. Joebar asked him whether all that was true and Columbus responded that while this is true, he was not a scholarly man. He studied these books by himself, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world.
Joebar noted that his guest is most famous for his travels across the Atlantic Ocean and asked Columbus to tell the audience more about those. Mr. Columbus shared that in 1492 he obtained the sponsorship of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I to sail west in search of a sea passage to India. He had two goals: open trade routes for Spain and bring the word of Jesus Christ to the non-Christians he expected to meet. On his first voyage he set sail with three ships — the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta — and land was sighted in the Bahamas on October twelfth. He sailed along the northern coast of Hispaniola and returned to Spain in 1493. He then made three more voyages in the following years, always believing that he had reached Asia. For his second voyage between 1493 and 1496, he had seventeen ships and founded La Isabela (in what is now the Dominican Republic), the first European town in the New World. This voyage also began Spain's effort to promote Christian evangelization. On his third voyage between 1498 and 1500, he reached South America and the Orinoco River delta. On his fourth voyage, between 1502 and 1504, he returned to South America and sailed along the coasts of present-day Honduras and Panama.
After Mr. Columbus was done with his exciting story, Joebar noted that his guest's success marked the beginning of continuous European efforts to explore and colonize the Americas. The audience then asked questions and greeted Mr. Columbus.
Next week's guest is Isaak Newton, so save the date!
Wednesday, December 22, 10:30am PST and 4:00pm PST.
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