Tag: christopher columbus

Chicago mayor permanently removes all Columbus statues from city parks

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has said he supports the decision for the city to permanently eliminate statues of Christopher Columbus from two different city parks. He said that the decision shows the city’s “collective humanity.” 

Both the Arrigo Park and Grant Park Columbus statues were removed from their places after the Black Lives Matter protests and riots during the summer of 2020, according to Fox 32. The statues have been in limbo after the original choice to remove them by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but Johnson backed a plan to make the removals permanent on Tuesday. 

“Art and culture in particular is something that I don’t believe we should erase,” Johnson said. “And we do have to make sure that our presentation is depicting not just truth, but the best part of our existence, which is our collective humanity.”

The permanent removals come after the resolution of a lawsuit launched by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans (JCCIA) over the statue. The settlement agreement sees to it that the statue from Arrigo Park goes to a museum that the JCCIA owns. The deal will leave the base in the park empty.

Mayor Johnson’s Park District CEO Rosa Ramirez-Rosa said of the plan, “The Chicago Park District is committed to diversifying our statuary to ensure we are honoring Chicago’s rich history and diversity.”

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DNA Reveals Surprising Twist About Christopher Columbus

On 22 February 1498, a well-weathered mid-40s Christopher Columbus ordained in writing that his estate in the Italian port city of Genoa would be maintained for his family “because from it I came and in it I was born”.

Though most historians regard the document to be a cut-and-dried record of the famed explorer’s birthplace, some have questioned its authenticity and wondered if there’s more to the story.

Last year, a decades-long investigation led by forensics scientist José Antonio Lorente from the University of Granada in Spain came out in support of claims that Columbus may not be of Italian heritage after all, but was actually born somewhere in Spain to parents of Jewish ancestry.

The revelation was announced in October as part of a special program broadcast in Spain to celebrate Columbus’s arrival in the New World on 12 October 1492.

It’s important to keep in mind that science by media ought to be viewed with caution, especially when there isn’t a peer-reviewed publication to critically examine.

“Unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, we can’t really evaluate what was in the documentary because they offered no data from the analysis whatsoever,” former director of Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences, Antonio Alonso, told Manuel Ansede and Nuño Domínguez at the Spanish news service, El País.

“My conclusion is that the documentary never shows Columbus’s DNA and, as scientists, we don’t know what analysis was undertaken.”

Nonetheless, historical documents are increasingly being challenged – and bolstered – by forensic analyses of biological records, raising the possibility that Columbus’s own DNA could potentially reveal insights into his family history.

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Columbus did NOT bring syphilis-like disease to America – the infection was running rampant 2,000 years ago, myth-busting study finds

Italian explorer Christopher Columbus has historically been charged with bringing syphilis-like diseases to the Americas, but a new study revealed the disease was running rampant thousands of years before.

The first onset of a syphilis epidemic was documented in the late 15th Century in Europe, leading historians to believe it was brought to America when Columbus set foot on the continent.

DNA evidence has now revealed that treponematosis, an age-old syphilis-like disease, existed in Brazil more than 2,000 years before the explorer set sail for the new world.

Left untreated, treponematosis may lead to disfiguring lesions and deformities in the bone, cartilage and skin – all of which can be painful and disabling.

Kerttu Majander, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, said: ‘The fact that the findings represent an endemic type of treponemal diseases, and not sexually transmitted syphilis, leaves the origin of the sexually transmitted syphilis still unsettled.’

The team examined the bones of four people who died in the coastal region of Santa Catarina in Brazil thousands of years ago.

Pathogens found in teh remains that showed signs of a syphilis-like illness that likely resulted in mouth sores and shin pains.

The study, published in Nature, said the bones were excavated at the Jabuticabeira II archeological site and have been studied since 2016.

Researchers screened 37 out of 99 samples of sequencing data and found there were between seven and 133 positive hits for diseases stemming from the Treponema family.

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