Radomu Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Christopher Columbus, the Founding Fathers (the US), Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan comes to mind... Anyone else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Columbus is a good call ... it doesn't matter how badly wrong you are as long as you're lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rupert_Baehr Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Don't get me started on Columbus! - But you did, so I'll finish. Didn't know where he was going, didn't know where he was when he got there - and did it on somebody else's money. The only good thing ( from, perhaps an American viewpoint) you can say about him was that he was not bound by formality. He named the land he 'discovered' (more about that later) after his sponsor, Amerigo Vespucci. Had he been a little more formal, he wouldn't have called it 'America' (his sponsor's first name) but 'Vespuccia'. - How do you think the current inhabitants would like the name 'Vespuccians'? Let's consider his navigation 'skills' (BTW, I'm a retired Nav.) He thought the world was round - Others thought it was flat. - Good on him! Navigators in his part of the world had been using sextants, octants and quadrants for many (more than 3000) years. They were well aware that one minute of arc subtended 1 nautical mile on the surface of the earth. Columbus believed the earth was round. Let's do the sums: (they're not hard ) 1 minute = 1 Nautical mile. 60 minutes (one degree) = 60 Nautical miles. 360 degrees in a circle, therefore the circumference of the earth is 360*60 = 21,600 nautical miles. (We haven't gone anywhere yet, nor have we made any outstanding discoveries. Just simple sums.) Columbus knew how far it was from Portugal to the East Indies (The place he was trying to find an alterative route to.) Had he sat down and subtracted the distance from the East Indies from the (believed by him) circumference of the world [21,60 miles] he could've calculated how far he had to sail going the other way. It appears he didn't bother to do the sums -( What a plonker!) He knew how fast his ships could sail. (About 3 knots average?) He didn't have a chronometer (didn't exist at that time) so he had no means of calculating Ch.Long (Change of Longitude) which would've given him a maximum (but understandable) Dead reckonng error of about 150 nautical miles. (He could've 'guestimated' his longitude.) 100 days out of port he might have (had he thought about it) sailed 100*24*3= 7200 nm. Had he done his sums, he would've realised that 21600-7200 (distance sailed) was nowhere near the distance required to reach the Indies. That didn't stop him from misidentifying the land he found. (Had he been one of my students, he would've been fired long before that! He wasn't a 'Navigator'- He was totally incompetent! A brave man, though. - but not a Navigator! Now let's consider 'Discovery': If you were placed in a dark empty room with your back to one wall and if you were told to keep walking,when you walked into another wall, would you say yau had 'discovered' it, or would you say you had walked into it? When Columbus finally ran into America (he could hardly have missed, unless he'd sank) he claimed to have 'Discovered' it? - How did he justify his claim? There were already people there. Descendants of people from the tribes of the Athabascan sub-culure. People who had been there for some thousands of years. How can you 'discover' a place which is already inhabited? There can be little doubt that Columbus was a very foolhardy man. But Columbus the navigator? - THe less said about his navigational 'skills' the better. I celebrate Columbus Day - It's 'Get Lost!' day.:hihi: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 He thought the world was round - Others thought it was flat. - Good on him! Nobody thought it was flat amongst the scholars. (Ordinary people neither knew, nor cared, what shape the Earth was as long as they could find food on it.) Columbus was working from a map which implied the globe was only 13,000 miles around. Everybody else knew that was wrong, which is why nobody would fund him except the Spanish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucifer Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Christopher Columbus, the Founding Fathers (the US), Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan comes to mind... Anyone else? Kamikazi Hirohito. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ding bat Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Not sure if she was a historical Figure, but Princess Diana.. Nice lady, but that's all, nothing special, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxy lady Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Christopher Columbus, the Founding Fathers (the US), Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan comes to mind... Anyone else? I'm puzzled why you include Winston Churchill on that list. I assume it is because you are totally ignorant about his entire life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frumius Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Garibaldi....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucifer Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Garibaldi....... He takes the biscuit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pattricia Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 I'm puzzled why you include Winston Churchill on that list. I assume it is because you are totally ignorant about his entire life. Im also puzzled as to why anyone should think Winston Churchill is overrated ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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