COLUMBUS’S ADVICE:  LET’S STICK IT OUT JUST A LITTLE LONGER:  When Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on August 3, 1492, he expected the trip to the Orient would take two months.  By October 10 (this day in history) the crew of the Santa Maria was ready to mutiny, and Columbus wasn’t feeling so great about the voyage either.  But he managed to convince them to keep going a little longer.  Early on October 12, land was sighted by a seaman aboard the Pinta.

(Columbus later claimed that he personally had sighted land first, but the consensus seems to be that he was a liar motivated by the fact that a reward had been offered to the man who first sighted land.)