JFK HONORS COLUMBUS DAY IN ROSE GARDEN CEREMONY
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On October 12, 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke at a ceremony honoring Columbus Day* held in the Rose Garden at the White House.
The President said...
"I think...Columbus would have to be considered the foremost sailor...in history. All of us who have followed the great navigator to the United States have prospered and benefited."
Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Columbus and who attended JFK's White House ceremony, wrote...
"Columbus...not only discovered a new world, but his success had encouraged other discoverers and opened new windows to science and all knowledge. To few men in modern history does the world as we know it owe so great a debt as to Christopher Columbus**."
*Columbus Day is a national holiday celebration of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed a one time celebration of the day. In 1934, an annual presidential proclamation was set up to celebrate Columbus Day. It became a federal holiday in 1968.
**Christopher Columbus [Cristoforo Columbo] (1451-1506) was born in Genoa, Italy to a wool weaver. CC went to sea at age 10. In the early 1480s he traded along the coast of West Africa. Self-educated, his goal was to sail West to reach the East. CC made 4 voyages to the Americas never realizing he had discovered a "New World."
SOURCE
"Admiral of the Ocean Sea, A Life of Christopher Columbus" by Samuel Eliot Morison, Little, Brown and Company, 1991. (First published in 1942.)
