Many local newspapers subscribe to the Associated Press daily almanac, a one-column feature that puts current events into historical perspective.  Although the AP is a nonprofit funded by participating newspapers, the bias of those participants flows into AP’s national and international news reporting.  The AP can also slant history, as it did last Thursday:

June 24th: “In 1497, the first recorded sighting of North America by a European took place as explorer John Cabot spotted land, probably in present-day Canada.”

To say that Giovanni Caboto only “sighted or spotted land” is a historic understatement.  His first voyage to the New World, the second explorer to do so, is well documented – from the contract he signed with England’s King Henry VII beforehand, to the results of that trip.  He not only “spotted” land (Newfoundland or Nova Scotia) he walked on it and planted two flags.  The flag of England gave Henry possession of the place and the flag of Venice represented Cabot’s personal claim as Henry’s vassal.  On a second voyage he sailed down the coast as far as the Chesapeake Bay area.  Indeed, Cabot received an annual pension when he returned to England for discovering the prolific Grand Banks cod fishery.  That fishing ground broke the Icelandic monopoly on cod and would enrich England and flood Europe with baccalá.

“The result of Cabot was the fishery,” says Peter Pope, an archeologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s. “That’s not what he intended, but that was what happened.” Cabot’s origin intent was to find a passage to the Orient.

Were the almanac entry written accurately, it would inform readers that Cabot’s voyage was the basis of England’s claim to North America and 13 colonies – not a minor event!  (And, an even greater accomplishment must be granted to Columbus’s first voyage – it unified the Earth!)  But the media nowadays would rather slant history to match the anti-Euro mood of the Left.  Little known is that Cabot and Italian investors in Bristol, England paid for his voyage, not the king.  Benjamin Franklin made that point in his 1775 essay, Vindication and Offer from Congress to Parliament; so, England did not “own” the colonies.   But, his logic fell on deaf ears.

More fishy history occurred last week at our southern “border” during Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to the El Paso airport.   Greeting her was Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas who jubilantly declared, “El Paso is the new Ellis Island.” Comparing Ellis Island – where our forebears arrived legally – to a southern border effectively controlled by Mexican drug cartels, beggars the imagination.  Our ancestors had to pass a physical in Italy before they even boarded a ship.  When they arrived here their documents were scrutinized, they were interrogated and medically reexamined, then shown the way to Manhattan without a nickel of welfare.  On the southern border, hordes of illegals without documentation, from scores of countries, are housed and fed for days or weeks, then given air or bus fare to travel anywhere in the country where they tap into local welfare services.

Border czar Kamala Harris’s new “Don’t Come!” policy allows anyone into the country, even women claiming domestic abuse (one of Kamala’s “root causes”).  Your husband abused you in Zambia, Africa?  Just fly to Mexico City, pay a cartel to get you to the border, and Uncle Sap will subsidize your illegal entry.  This is the “new Ellis Island”, on a continent accidentally opened to the world by a misguided Italian in 1492; in a nation made possible by another lost Italian who “spotted” a place where English democracy and capitalism would take root in 1497.

Giovanni Caboto never got his due in the American Republic.  He is only honored in Newfoundland and Labrador with the “June Holiday” or “Discovery Day”.  The English were slow to follow up on his landing; it took another 100-plus years until the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.  In between, the French led by Giovanni da Verrazzano staked a claim to Canada. Italian navigators created three empires!

For Italian Americans, Giovanni Caboto is not even a minor hero.  His name was anglicized and his amazing feats written off in one sentence in grade school.  Even the anti-Euro crowd doesn’t need him as a piñata, since he had no contact with Indigenous people.  Maybe we could honor him with a tee-shirt:

 “Cabot gave England an Empire, but all We got was Baccalá.” -JLM