An Open Letter to the President of Turkey

Dear President of Turkey,

You keep showing up on my Facebook "trending" feed today. Apparently the news cares very much about what you have to say.

I was interested, so I read the article, in which you claim that in 1178, Muslims discovered America, thereby unseating the claim that the discovery was made by Columbus. In the article you sounded very smug about this. While I can't expect Yahoo news to provide primary sources or anything, some evidence supporting that claim might have been nice. Instead, the only thing listed to back it up is a journal entry of Columbus's, in which he mentions a mosque that is widely understood to be a metaphorical description of the landscape.

But let's say - as is very possible - the news is simply being lazy and not bothering to fact check. Let's say you're right, and in 1178, some Muslims did show up in Cuba.

Dude... if you're gonna count that, you've gotta count Leif Erikson, the viking who landed in Newfoundland around the year 1000, and even left some shred of archaeological evidence that he was there (something the news article did, in fact, mention was lacking from the Muslim account).

So, hate to break it to you, but even if you can claim Muslims were here before Columbus, Western Europeans still discovered America. Leif was even a Christian on top of that. He first saw it (and rescued two shipwrecked castaways from it) after being blown off course while sailing to bring Christianity to Greenland. After that experience, he went back to Greenland, did some research, and then set out to explore. He found it again, named it Vinland, and hung out there for a while.

So, sorry, President Erdogan. If you're gonna be smug about something, at least get your facts straight.

Sincerely,

An Overly Opinionated Person Who Studied History at Some Point in Her Life

Savannah found an online blog title generator, and what happened next will BLOW YOUR MIND!!!

Ladies and Gentleman, humans of the human race, we have done it.

Congratulations.

In what will confuse alien explorers and scientists for millennia, we have placed evidence of human civilization on a flying comet.

Everybody say, "Yay!"

Everybody: "Um, that was yesterday's news. You're a little behind the times, sweetie."

No no no, I'm not done.

Today's news is that the lander, Philae, has now sent back the first ever photo of a comet, taken from the surface of a comet!!!

Everybody: "YAY!!!"

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, straight from 28 light minutes away, we have a picture of - you'll never believe it - a ROCK!

I'm sure scientists may already have had an inkling that comets were not, in fact, made of gumdrops, crystallized dragon turds, or actual Comet. But Philae has confirmed it; comets are actually made of rock.

Nevertheless, being equipped with sample collection equipment, as well as a processing lab, Philae will soon be double checking, by performing chemical analysis on the rock, to make sure it isn't actually fossilized dragon turd.

I look forward to finding out the results.

Don't you?