By: Brogan Frey

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” This quote is one that many people hear often, most commonly on a day known as Columbus Day. However, in past years, this name has been subject to controversy. Here’s why. 

Columbus Day is celebrated annually on the second Monday of October. In the past few decades, a day named “Indigenous Peoples Day” has started to take over and replace Columbus Day. 

Last year, Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to formally recognize Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. The first thought of Indigenous Peoples Day was in 1977, at the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas. The convention, which was sponsored by the United Nations and held in Geneva, Switzerland, was when countries began to discuss replacing Columbus Day in the Americas with a celebration to be known as Indigenous Peoples Day.  

In 1992, in the city of Berkley, California, “[S]ymbolically renamed Columbus Day as ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ to protest the historical conquest of North America by Europeans, and to call attention to the losses suffered by the Native American peoples and their cultures through diseases, warfare, massacres, and forced assimilation”.

Before we get too far into Indigenous Peoples Day, let’s talk about Columbus Day. This day is, as many may already know, named after the famous European explorer Christopher Columbus, who many know as the first person to “discover” the Americas. Although this is something that, until recently, was taught often in classrooms around the country, there are actually a few things that are incorrect about this statement. 

The first thing incorrect in this statement is when it is said that he was the first person to discover the Americas. This is far from correct. This is the ignoring of an entire group of people who had lived on these 2 continents for a long time before Christopher Columbus had even seen them. Indigenous peoples had already been living in the Americas for thousands of years when Columbus “discovered” them. Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, he was simply one of the first non-natives to find them. 

Now that we know that he was not the first person to discover the Americas, let’s go into the other thing incorrect about this statement. Columbus wasn’t even the first non-native person to find the Americas. The first confirmed non-natives to find the Americas were Vikings in around 1,000 A.D. from Greenland. 

There is clear evidence that this group of Vikings stayed for about 10 years before returning to Greenland, supposedly because relations with native North Americans were hostile at best. This group consisted of a man named Leif Erikson and his extended family. 

Even before the Vikings, there is legend of an Irish monk, named Saint Brendan, sailing to North America on a wooden boat covered in animal fur. His alleged journey is detailed in the ancient annals (historical records) of Ireland. There is, however, no evidence that he ever made landfall in North America. 

Essentially, Columbus was never the first non-native to find the Americas. His story is simply told so often because of the dramatics of it all. He begged the King and Queen of Spain to give him ships so he could sail to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. 

At the time of his voyage, Europeans knew the earth was round, but they didn’t know that the Pacific Ocean or the Americas existed. Because of this, Columbus thought that if he sailed East, he would eventually get to India because he thought that it was just the Atlantic in between Spain and India. 

A few months after setting sail in August of 1492, Columbus spotted the island of Cuba, on October 12th, 1492, believing it to be mainland China. In December, the expedition found Hispaniola, which they believed to be Japan. They didn’t know they were in a place previously unknown to Europeans. 

Soon after landing in Cuba, he and his crew found out that they were not in fact in China, but a completely new place. On his first day in what was called “the New World,” he ordered six of the natives to be seized. Columbus kept a journal, and on this, he wrote that he believed that the natives that were seized would be good servants. 

This is where this story turns dark. This is the part of the journey and “discovery” that is not spoken about nearly enough. Throughout his years in Cuba, Columbus enacted many policies of forced labor in which natives were put to work for the sake of profits. 

Later, according to History.com, he sent thousands of Taino people (the natives) from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold. Many died on the trip. Those that were left behind were forced to search for gold in mines and work on plantations. Within 60 years of Columbus arriving, only a few hundred Taino Indians were left of what was most likely a group of over 250,000 before Columbus. 

Violence wasn’t the only thing that killed many native populations in the Americas. The Europeans brought many diseases that had never shown up there before. These diseases killed about 90% of the population that hadn’t already been killed by Columbus or his crew. 

Overall, Columbus was far from being the first person to find the Americas. There was at least one confirmed group before him, and many that have not been confirmed but who may have visited long before him. He was also cruel and racist towards the natives, and his policies ended up killing several hundred thousand people. 

We need to stop celebrating a man who ruined and ended many lives. Next year, instead of Columbus Day, let’s celebrate the first, original people who called these lands home by celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day. 

For more information on Indigenous Peoples Day, please visit

• https://www.history.com/news/indigenous-peoples-

For more information on Columbus Day, please visit

• https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/columbus-day#:~:text=Columbus%20Day%20is%20a%20U.S.,a%20federal%20holiday%20until%201937

By: Ella Sutherland & Lauren Kottke

Dwight D. Eisenhower was known as one of the most masterful army generals of his time. He was a major contributor to WW2 and the Allied victory. He never gave up on his troops and always gave them credit for all of the fighting they endured. He was also known for being very strategic. After the war, when he went home, he was proclaimed a hero.

Dwight Eisenhower became involved in the war when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December, and the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, made Eisenhower go to Washington D.C. to work as a planning officer. He was already listed in the army because in WW1, he served as a military aide to General John J. Pershing. He was stationed in the Philippines at the end of WW1 and stayed there until WW2 began. He then left the Philippines after Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

Throughout the war he had many accomplishments. Eisenhower got a general star in September 1941, and was promoted to brigadier general. In November 1942 Eisenhower led Operation Torch, it was a successful Allied invasion of North Africa. The operation began on November 8, and ended on November 16, 1942. The reason for the attack was to try to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union.

Then, in February 1943, he led his troops to face the Germans in Tunisia. His troops were getting destroyed in the battle of the Kasserine Pass, before he surrendered. There were over 6,000 casualties. The Kasserine war was the start of an attack against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The loss of this battle was one of the Allies worst moments, and they suffered a major loss.

After that extreme loss he started becoming very strategic. He figured out that the problem was that the troops were not working together and that he wasn’t being a good leader. He figured his way of going about these battles was wrong in the sense that he was treating it like every man for themselves, so he changed his way of leading and they started winning more battles.

After that, he directed the invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943, that led to the fall of the Italian regime and the fall of Mussolini in June 1944. In this battle, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully attacked and made German and Italian troops leave Sicily, and then planned to attack the Italian mainland.

Later, in 1943, Eisenhower was made Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and he was in charge of leading U.S. troops into Europe for the battle of D-Day. D-Day took place on June 6, 1944, when many U.S. troops landed in Normandy, France trying to free Western Europe from Nazi Germany.

After the war ended Eisenhower became president of the United States of America, and while he was serving as president he prevented America from going into any more wars. Also, while he was president he worked on making peace with Korea and ended up making a truce with them. He started trying to ease the after effects of the Cold War and was for the most part, successful.

All throughout the war Eisenhower led the U.S. through many battles and won a great amount of them. In the end, his contribution to the war, and the U.S., helped the Allied powers win the war. Every battle he helped lead, that won, put the Allied side at an advantage and helped lead to the end of the war when the Allied powers won.

By: Toby Martin-Kohls

Airlines have flown many routes over the course of their existence, mergers, recessions, and some routes we have today were the same as routes that were used in the 1960s. American Airlines has flown between New York and Los Angeles for many decades. They have had a daily service leaving New York at 12:00pm daily since the 1960s. 

The 1967 version of this flight took a grand total of 5 hrs and 43min long for travel time. Today’s version of this flight is listed at 6hrs and 27min.  In reality, in this example, the time spent in the air is the same. Today’s schedules now account for congestion and delays at airports, and things going wrong. 

We have made many advancements in technology in the last 50 years, so why is the flight time longer or still the same?

Let’s take a look at how airplane engines have evolved. There are 3 main types of engines. They are the turboprop, the turbofan, and the turbojet. Each of them has a range of speeds at which they are most efficient. 

The turboprop is what you will most likely see on propeller aircraft. Almost all of the thrust from turboprop engines comes from the propeller. These engines are typically inexpensive to buy and operate so a lot of smaller commuter planes use these engines. Of course, the trade-off here is that they are not as fast. They are most efficient at speeds of 325mph to 375mph. Any faster than that and it is better to use a turbofan.

Turbofans are the type of engines that you can see pretty much everywhere. Almost every commercial aircraft is turbo fan-driven. Turbofan engines are most efficient at the speeds most aircraft fly at today, 400mph to 620mph. 

If you want to go supersonic, you would have to go above 767mph, and you would need a turbojet engine. Turbojet engines are very similar to turbofan engines, except all the air goes through the engine’s turbine. This lets the engines reach really high speeds, but they also require immense fuel. The engines are really only efficient between 1,300mph and 1,400mph. 

The Concorde used a turbojet engine to go supersonic. It burned 46.85lbs of fuel per every mile flown. To put this in comparison with an aircraft used today, that is using new technology to become the most efficient, the new B787-Dreamliner consumes 18.7lbs of fuel for every mile flown. 

Compared to today’s commercial planes, the Concorde was pretty small. It held 100 passengers, compared to 291 passengers on the Dreamliner. The per-person fuel economy on the Concorde was around 14mpg, compared to 104mpg per passenger on the Dreamliner. 

There were only two commercial airlines that flew the Concorde, which was British Airways and Air France. They could not afford to keep flying the plane. Less than one-third of the seats were actually occupied by paying customers. Other seats were occupied by using miles to pay for their seat or upgrades from first class on normal flights. It cost a minimum of $7,500 (adjusted for inflation) to fly one way from London to New York in 3hrs, in seats that look very similar to economy class today.

British Airways introduced its first Business Class lay-flat seat in 2000, and many opted to choose this 7hr flight in comfort instead of the Concorde. 

The whole idea of the Concorde was to create the most efficient way to cross the Atlantic for business travelers, but now in the early 2000s, travelers from the U.S. could book 7hr flights leaving in the evening, sleep on the plane, and wake up in Europe. 

The Concorde is not the best luxurious or efficient option anymore. Its last flight came on October 24, 2003, ending the era of commercial supersonic flight.

For the airlines, speed doesn’t really matter. It really only exists as a selling point for the consumer. The cost of the airplane is a relatively small part of the overall cost to fly so you’ll never see an airline fly faster so they can use their planes more. 

Plane’s lifespans are generally rated in cycles; the number of times a plane takes off and lands. The Dreamliner we talked about earlier has a lifespan of 44,000 cycles and a list price of $224.6 million, which is often higher than the actual sale price. That means the cost of the airplane per flight is $5,104.54, while the fuel cost to operate a flight from New York to London is $18,727. Therefore, airlines just always fly their aircraft at the most efficient speeds. That speed is almost always between 500-550mph. 

That is well below the speed of sound, which is 767mph. Why don’t planes fly just below the speed of sound? Flying at just below this speed is flying in the Transonic Range, which increases drag, and destabilizes the aircraft, which would be quite dangerous. Flying in this range (Mach 0.8-Mach 1.2) actually requires more fuel than flying above Mach 1.2. So essentially, the speed limit for commercial aircraft to be economically viable is 613.8mph. 

With current speeds, airplanes are able to fly anywhere on earth within 24hrs. The barrier for most people to travel is cost, not speed, so manufacturers and airlines will continue to focus their efforts on driving down the cost of travel, not the time. In the end, time is the money of only a privileged few and cost is the enemy of the masses.

For more information, please visit:

• https://skybrary.aero/articles/transonic-flight
• https://aircraftexchange.com/blog/what-determines-an-aircrafts-lifespan
• https://aerocorner.com/blog/types-of-aircraft-engines/

By: Liibaan Yusuf

The financial crisis of 2008 is said to have been worse than any global economic meltdown since Black Tuesday of 1929, which lead to the Great Depression.

The 2008 financial crisis was an extremely complicated full meltdown of the housing market in the US. Unlike the rest of the world, the housing market in the US is interconnected with the financial market, as to where it is impossible too purchase a house without the intermediary of a bank.

In the years leading up, banks were giving out loans and mortgages left and right with no regard. In late 2001, the federal reserve had lowered the national interest rate from 6 percent to a mind-blowing 1 percent! Upon hearing this, banks and aspiring home owners jumped to getting loans with dirt low interest rates. Banks also took advantage and sold those loans to Wall Street Banks.

By 2004, the Federal Reserve had brought up interest rates to almost 6 percent again but in the 4 year rush, homeownership was at almost 70%! People had gotten great deals on homes! In early 2006, banks began to re-evaluate homes and the majority of prices dropped sharply. People who had gotten a loan on a 500,000 dollar house were being told their house was only worth 300,000 dollars! These people were locked in loans paying off amounts their home wasn’t actually worth! Some were almost done paying it off and some were in the beginning stages of doing such.

People were scared to sell their homes because of horror stories! Those who did sell now owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, that they didn’t have, to their original lenders! Banks had essentially given people money in a loan, the receivers took the loan to buy a mortgage for a house, locked in a deal for what seemed great, but were told their house wasn’t worth what they were paying, and now the banks couldn’t get back the loans they had once given out to everyone and anyone!

One by one, banks started filing for bankruptcy. By early 2007, 25 subprime lenders had went bankrupt. Swiss Bank UBS, one of the most renowned banks in the world, had announced that they were 3.4 billion dollars in the red. But in the US, IndyMac bank, one of the biggest US based banks to have been affected, had be seized by the US government, but it would be a bank named after a different set of brothers to take the biggest fall. Lehman Brothers, had completely been demolished, and their name tarnished. They were known as the bank behind the whole collapse!

By mid 2008, it was the US government who issued a Wall Street bailout in response to the carnage.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/financial-crisis-review.asp
• https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/subprime-market-2008.asp
• https://www.history.com/.amp/this-day-in-history/lehman-brothers-collapses

By: Liv Miller

Cultural appropriation is defined by Britannica.com as “When members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way.” Cultural appropriation is a growing topic in this country that when it occurs, or is discussed, often creates controversy.

The cultural appropriation of Native American or indigenous culture happens more often than you think, and it occurs, more times than not, without it even being recognized as wrong. Things such as Halloween costumes, sports team names/mascots, logos, and festival wear, may seem innocent and harmless but are actually dehumanizing and create a false interpretation of Native Americans.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker is an independent writer and researcher in Indigenous studies. She argues on Beaconbroadside.com that “The dehumanization of these peoples is ingrained in American culture. The majority of Americans are so desensitized to certain images” and acts of cultural appropriation that the problem still continues to exist.

Despite the long history and record of human rights violations against Native Americans, the American public still remains fascinated with its own image of the “Indian”. American companies, time and time again, have profited off of putting highly stereotypical images of an “Indians” on their products. Anywhere from toys and jewelry, to tobacco products, and common groceries like butter, baking soda, and cleaning supplies. The Indians shown on these labels are created by people who have little to no understanding of Native American communities and culture. This lack of education and understanding leads to inaccurate and stereotypical images on products that have absolutely nothing to do with the people supposedly being portrayed on the labels.

Cultural appropriation is known to often happen in sports as well. There was much controversy surrounding the names of sports teams like the Washington “Redskins” and the Cleveland “Indians”. Fans for the Washington Redskins used to dress up in Native American attire and wear body and face paint, painting themselves red. The team has since changed their name and is no longer allowing fans to enter the stadium dressed in this attire and makeup.

Many of these issues stem from the lack of knowledge on Native American culture. There are so many ways that we can honor and appreciate this culture rather than appropriate it. But to do so we must find ways to respect them and listen to the voices of indigenous people rather than create harmful stereotypes and advertise incorrect perpetuations on Native American culture, customs, and history.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/finders-keepers-adulteration-native-american-cultures-name
• https://ascjcapstone.com/terms/spring-2019/kchristy/