Memory, Amnesia, and Lies

After the information I have read in "Lies My Teacher Told Me", Columbus day seems, well, not necessary. It seems to me that Columbus was far from noble and was simply lucky enough to be the one who made "big deal" out of Americas. He did not discover anything , simply because almost everything was discovered decades before his journey across the sea. And yet it is him who modern day Americans celebrate. To give credit to the US Government website on Columbus Day however, information on that website is true. Just a little bit inaccurate, many of the "inconvenient" facts about Columbus were simply "extracted" from the text. Perhaps whoever posted the information on that website simply didn't want to disappoint children who were taught Columbus is a "good guy", so he left out the facts that would make him the opposite of the "good guy". Overall, Columbus Day has been a holiday for a long time, and perhaps it is necessary, I just wish people of this country knew their own history better.