WHO DISCOVERED AMERICA?

First, this is a big day for celebrations:

Columbus Day.

Still a federal holiday in the USA and many countries of the Americas.
Italian Christopher Columbus representing Spain arrived in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 after a journey of 3 months.

This was a surprise, for they were expecting to find a way to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Asia.
However, America was named after Italian Amerigo Vespucci (right) on his second journey across the Atlantic in 1501, for Portugal, because he was the first to indicate that he found a New World.

The other controversy is that many today feel that Columbus was responsible for lands to be taken away from the Indians. Thus, there seems to be sentiment for this day to be called something like Indigenous Peoples Day.

The third controversy is that the first European to visit North America was Leif Erickson, around the year 1000, almost 500 years before Columbus. Congress in 1969 did designate October 9 as Leif Erickson Day, but efforts to make this a national holiday failed.

There is a legend that Irish Monk Saint Brendan in the 6th century sailed to North America on a currack, a wood-framed boat covered with animal skin. In 1976, writer Tim Severing did just that, building such a craft, and landed in Canada. But there is still no evidence that Brendan was the first.
However, there is more to a Chinese fleet under Admiral Zheng He coming to North America in 1421. I've covered his exploits several times. Here is one posting of about a dozen years ago. And another one from last year. Note how much larger He's Treasure ship was compared to that of Columbus.
Watch this fascinating video of who discovered America.

I should add that today is also International Beer and Pizza Day.

Some say the beer part goes back to the Ancient Egyptians, for it was the favorite drink of the time, even fed to slaves, so they could stay healthy.
The pizza part heralds to 997 AD in Gaeta, Italy. Mind you, tomatoes came to Europe from the New World, so the original pizza did not have tomato sauce.
So International Beer and Pizza Day came into existence in 2016, the brainchild of Nick Saulino.

Finally, today is National Moldy Cheese Day.

Yes, you can also say October 9 is Mouldy Cheese day.
You throw most moldy foods away.
Some best cheeses are so because of the mold.
You say Blue Cheese, but others also indicate Gorgonzola, Camembert, Brie and Stilton.
I must say that moldy cheeses are my favorite. So much so that I will change my lunch today and have this.
Also a favorite of Charlemagne, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Julia Child and Cardi B.

Super Typhoon Koinu has now weakened into a tropical depression. However, Hurricane Lidia will tomorrow will strengthen into a Category 2 storm and make landfall well north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

IS FLORIDA AGAIN THREATENED BY A MEGA TSUNAMI FROM LA PALMA?

From the morning New York Times : Here is a graph comparing average daily COVID-19 deaths/100,000 people, and the USA is doing something really wrong: The difference between our country and Europe is that we have flubbed the availability of cheap and ubiquitous at-home RAPID testing. They have covered this base. There are two obvious problems: The FDA is much too bureaucratic about quickly approving anything related to this pandemic, including testing. We seem stuck with the test that takes one to several days to get your result. The good news is that the Biden administration has finally realized this problem and through executive order hope to soon flood the market with take home testing that at first will be subsidized to make it affordable. Now, on to getting everyone vaccinated, especially 5-11 years olds ( and we are close to getting to making this happen ), the undereducated and Republicans. What to do about the latter two? The other concern is whether we a...

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