Like Cortes, Colombus toppled civilizations in spite of being deeply outnumbered, ill-supplied, and thousands of miles from home. Pretty interesting and heroic if you ask me. I think Cortes takes the cake though; the Aztec Empire was a much more worthy foe than a bunch of naked savages on Hispaniola.
Shame about the genocide but it's not like he was the only one that murdered natives, that was par for the course with settlers, explorers, and conquistadors from 1500-1880ish.
Neither were good people and definitely shouldn't be revered, just remembered.... accurately
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