15. Predicting an Eclipse to Overawe Natives
The New World ended up named after another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Amerigo mapped South America’s eastern shore down to Brazil, and demonstrated conclusively that Columbus had not reached Asia, but hitherto unknown lands. A German mapmaker labeled the New World “America” after Amerigo. His maps were quite popular, so the name America stuck and spread. As to Columbus, one of the more remarkable stories about him in those days revolves around his manipulating Natives by predicting an eclipse. The gist is that he was marooned in an island, and got into trouble with the locals. To intimidate them, he exploited a fortuitously timed eclipse predicted in an almanac, and pretended that he possessed supernatural powers that enabled him to remove the Moon and Sun from the sky. It is a plot straight out of an old-timey Hollywood movie or a cheesy adventure novel, but is it fact or fiction?
