Was Columbus Secretly a Jew?
At CNN, Charles Garcia uses the 508th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ death to investigate the possibility that the great Italian explorer was really a Jew. Among other historical oddities, Garcia points to the fact that Columbus “was originally going to sail on August 2, 1492, a day that happened to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, marking the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples of Jerusalem.” Garcia writes that Columbus decided to leave the following day, in order “to avoid embarking on the holiday, which would have been considered by Jews to be an unlucky day to set sail.”