4 The Spanish had other advantages too,
5 aLike knowing how to build a lot of ships,
6 And having a lot of their own Explorers,
7 Called bconquistadors,
8 Who were absolutely the best at helping themselves to everything they found,
9 Though not quite as good at finding it in the first place.
CHAPTER 71 The cFrench started from dFrance,
2 Which would have been a tremendous advantage,
3 If the French had known anything about building ships,
4 Or sailing them,
5 Which they didn't,
6 Being French,
7 eAnd living in a nation that was surrounded on only three sides by various seas and oceans,
8 fWhich is also why the French came to be called Frogs.
CHAPTER 81 The gEnglish started from hEngland,
2 Which would have been an overwhelming advantage to any nation but the English,
3 iWho never believed in doing things the easy way,
4 And so started late,
5 To give all the other nations a fighting chance.
CHAPTER 91 And so it happened that the first Explorer who discovered something really important was jColumbus,
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2 Who was an Italian,
3 And therefore sailed west into the kAtlantic,
4 Under the flag of lSpain,
5 mWhich is how history works sometimes,
6 nAnd explains why life is so confusing,
7 oAnd so often seems like some big accident,
8 pWhich is exactly how Columbus discovered America.
9 It turned out that Columbus had been trying to discover a shorter route to qIndia,
10 Where they keep all the rsalt and pepper and other spices,
11 sBecause he thought that the earth wasn't flat,
12 But round,
13 Like an orange,
14 Which meant that he could get to the east by going westt.
15 As it happened, Columbus was mostly right.
16 The earth was round,
17 Though not like an orange,
18 As much as, say, a basketball,
19 Which is to say that it was bigger than he thought,
20 Big enough, in fact, to have a couple of other continents on it that nobody had known about.
CHAPTER 101 Columbus's discovery of America was thus extremely funny,
2 Proving that the Giants had been right about the value of having a uModern Age,
3 And making a lot of new history.
4 The funniest thing of all was that Columbus sailed west into the Atlantic several times and never once landed on either of the two gigantic continents that sat on the other side of the ocean,
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