Word: apocrypha
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Dates: during 1991-1991
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...part, the celebration of 1992 will have done its job if it erases a number of the apocrypha patched onto the figure of the Discoverer, as the 19th century called him. Some are obviously false, such as the tenacious story that Queen Isabella sold her jewels to pay for his first voyage, or that the Santa Maria was crewed by convicts, or that Columbus was trying to prove the world was round. (No educated person in the late 15th century, and no mariner either, believed otherwise...