Monday, October 13, 2014

My Blog = My Cardboard History

When I was a kid, I remember learning about Christopher Columbus and his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean where he discovered the New World.


Years later, I was told a different story by one of my college professors and it literally rocked my world.

He taught us about the genocide and slave trade surrounding Columbus's visit to Hispaniola... which was information I'm pretty sure my elementary school teachers left out of their lessons.

Topps also failed to add this information to the back of Columbus's 1952 Topps Look 'n See card:


I still wonder why my elementary school teachers felt our young minds were ready to learn about slaves brought over from Africa... but not the ones brought back to Spain.

I also remember learning about the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis and the barbaric war crimes committed by the Japanese during World War II.  Yet... I never read anything from those teachers about the executions Columbus performed on the Natives.

But I guess that's just part of history.  People tend to remember the information they want passed along... while omitting the stuff they want to forget.

I can totally relate to that.  How often do I show off the 1988 Topps Tony Bernazard card in my collection, compared to my 1956 Topps Jackie Robinson?

Oh... I almost forgot to talk about the actual card in this post.  I picked this card up back in August for 99¢ off of eBay.  I bought this card with a bunch of vintage Japanese cards, because the seller offered combined shipping.

The set was produced by Topps back in 1952 and consists of 135 cards featuring U.S. Presidents, military leaders, inventors, explorers, and other famous people in world history.  The back of each card features a trivia question related to person on the card.  Collectors could use a decoder, made out of red cellophane to reveal the answer... which is why the set is called Look 'n See.

Well... that's enough "history talk" for today.  Happy Monday and sayonara!

3 comments:

JediJeff said...

Why? Because the text books decide what we teach, and it's those in charge of the text books they decide how we teach them. That's why it's scary as crap - the latest text books that may be in school, with how history is perverted and changed to suit what they want you to know, as opposed to the truth of what happened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/12/proposed-texas-textbooks-are-inaccurate-biased-and-politicized-new-report-finds/

Among dozens of other articles on the net. When school books make the claim that the America Civil War was a battle about state's rights, completely downplaying that the war was about owning a human, something is wrong.

Hackenbush said...

Your post reminded me of a great Randy Newman song, "The Great Nations of Europe" http://youtu.be/ua0pR06pevU

Anonymous said...

That's such a neat set. My personal favourite is Leif Ericson. :)