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ORIGINAL: BKSir

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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If anything, we should celebrate Leif Erickson who found the place, looked around, said...

"...Well damn! Darn if there aren't already people here who 'discovered' it first!"

LOL, yep, pretty much.  I'm just saying Leif, because he's the first one we can actually narrow down to an individual.  Not counting the Mongols who migrated over LONG before and eventually became the "Native Americans".  No, not an insult either, it was the Mongols and to a lesser extent, very early Chinese.  That is, if one believes dna similarities that would have obviously been changed and evolved over the course of a couple thousand years, give or take.

That, and how can one not like a guy named Leif, son of Erik the Red?
Granted, they did their fair share of pillaging and plundering too, but they were honest and up front about it.

As far as Columbus Day though.  I don't mark it on my list of "real holidays".  Come on, seriously.  That's like expecting Groundhog Day, or Talk Like A Pirate Day, or St. Swithens Day off.  A good number of people on the street probably don't even know what month Columbus Day is if you would ask them, or why we "celebrate" it.  If one can call tire, tv, furniture and appliance sales "celebrating".

EDIT:  God forbid I ever actually learn to spell "furniture" correctly.

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ORIGINAL: Level

Hey, don't knock Talk Like A Pirate day!

LookieNN, I agree; the older I get, the less I know, at least compared to how much I used to think I knew.

Potty... I think the idea of making it Explorer's Day (BK mentioned that, I think) is a good one. I don't discount what they accomplished, but I don't think we should candy-coat their negatives, especially to kids in school.