Today is the 532nd anniversary of one of the most important events in human history...

On October 12, 1492, a small Spanish fleet of ships under the command of Christopher Columbus (born Cristoforo Colombo) weighed anchor in the Bahamas, off the coast of the island of San Salvador. This Italian explorer, looking for a shorter sea route to India to avoid the heavy taxes and tariffs of the Ottoman Empire, had instead stumbled upon lands that were heretofore unknown to the people of Europe. While it is true that Norsemen had discovered and even settled parts of what we know of today as Canada some 500 years before Columbus, they kept those discoveries to themselves.

Columbus and the Spanish let it be known to the whole world that there were new lands to the west, just across the Atlantic Ocean. And as a result this discovery triggered a wave of exploration and colonization the likes of which the world had never seen. But more importantly, as Neil deGrasse Tyson stated several years ago on the Joe Rogan Experience, this discovery reunited all of humanity for the first time in tens of thousands of years.