Lets pretend for a second. Ignore the 8 million figure, since its questionable.
Lets say there were 2,000,000 people on Haiti in 1492.
Christopher Columbus enslaved them and worked them to death. He was the leader of the Spanish in the region. As Hitler is responsible for the Halocaust, Columbus is responsible for the genocide. Do we really want a holiday dedicated to such a person? Someone who would enslave, kill, or maim 2,000,000 people for gold?
Sorry, I meant Christopher Columbus. But I believe the point that he broke against society and the Church in a time when it still wasn’t “Right” to think the world was round makes a big difference.
First off, also according to “Lies my Teacher Told me”, Columbus disproving that the world was flat is also a myth. As far back as Ancient Greece, scientists proved the earth was round, as it cast a spherical shadow on the moon. Evidence shoes (don’t have the book on me) that no serious scientist at the time believed that the earth was flat. The Flat Earth story is as much a children’s tale as the first thanksgiving.
How about a man who “broke against society and the church”, Charles Darwin. His book “The Origin of Species” changed science as a whole. Evolution is one of the biggest scientific discoveries in the past 300 years. Darwin didn’t kill millions of people. Darwin saved millions of lives.