I was listening to Armstrong and Getty on the radio this morning when they made a pretty good point. Today is Columbus Day, a holiday that many consider to be one of the most pointless holidays of the entire year.

After all Columbus didn’t discover anything, people were already here, and he wasn’t that good of a person by all accounts. So why do we have an official government holiday for him ?

Certainly one of the main reasons is Italian pride, and that is understandable, but why not honor someone who really is worthy of Italian pride.

Leonardo Da Vinci discovered a lot of things, indeed some consider him to be the smartest man who ever lived. In addition why not have a holiday dedicated to the concept of science and learning, having children taught to honor intelligence ?

Now Leonardo was born in April, so we’d have to fudge things a little to keep the holiday in the fall, but I’m sure we could figure out a reason to do that.

So how bout we dump Columbus Day and adopt Da Vinci day instead ?