Break out the salted cod!

Hooray, today's Columbus Day. Yaaaay. Look, I'm glad America exists and all, but Christopher Columbus was kind of a dick. Also, he didn't discover the Americas, he just sort of introduced the inhabitants to all the diseases Europeans had been breeding in their dense urban sprawls for hundreds of years.

"You're welcome."

-Christopher Columbus

Other notable Nordic-Americans
include...uh, I think Rose from
Golden Girls? She counts, right?

Anyway, as I'm sure you're aware, tomorrow is Leif Ericson Day (ironically coming after Columbus Day). Who Whatson-wah Day? Leif Ericson Day: the day set aside to honor Leif Ericson, the Viking explorer. He also didn't discover America, but he did it (or rather didn't do it) about 492 years before Christopher 'Typhoid Mary' Columbus. Also, while Ericson's voyages didn't result in permanent settlement in the New World, they did result in 100% less genocide. So what did Ericson accomplish? Well, other than one-upping Christopher Columbus, and giving us a white-guilt-free alternative to Columbus Day, he's also a hero to millions of Scandinavian Americans.

Still, neither of these guys really discovered America. I mean, there were people here already, and they got here by crossing the Bering Strait at low tide in the middle of an ice age. Can't we get a day off for that?

Did I mention that they hunted these things? With sharpened sticks?