Columbus Day: History and Party Trivia



Ask almost any American elementary student why the Country celebrates Columbus Day and they will immediately recite “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Historically, this is true. Christopher Columbus did set sail in 1492 in order to discover new lands for the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The sailing party consisted of three ships: the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa Maria. Columbus had sailed to far away lands before including Guinea and Iceland. In this trip, it was the aspiration of Columbus to discover the East Indies. When Columbus spotted the new lands, Columbus thought that he had, in fact, reached the East Indies; which are a group of islands located off of the coast of Southeast Asia. Instead, Columbus had came ashore in the Bahamas, and later Cuba and Hispaniola (now known as Haiti); all of which are off of the coast of the Americas – a long way from his original target.

The first official Columbus Day celebration was held in Colorado in 1905 and after 1920 the celebration became an annual event. There were, however, many less official Columbus Day celebrations held before the State of Colorado declared the official holiday. For example, one of the first recorded celebrations of Columbus Day was a ceremony held in New York City in 1792. The Columbian Order organized the occasion to honor Christopher Columbus and the 300th anniversary his landing in the islands of the Bahamas. The 1866 the Italian population of New York City sponsored another celebration of Columbus Day on October 12th. This celebration was based upon Columbus’ discovery of Americas. This movement within the Italian-American population spread across the country and in 1869 a similar celebration called “C-day” was held in San Francisco.

President Benjamin Harrison had a commemorative Columbus Day holiday in 1892 which was intended to honor the 400th year anniversary of the voyage. In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed that October 12 would be known as Columbus Day. The October 12th date was changed in 1971 when Congress made Columbus Day a Federal public holiday that occurs the second Monday of October regardless of the date.

Recent years has brought about a great deal of controversy regarding Columbus’ expedition and the discoveries he made – especially in light of the clear miss of the targeted area of exploration and the natives of the Bahamas region being turned into slaves. However, as a direct result of Columbus’ attempt to discover the East Indies, scholars were able to gain a better understanding of just how large the Earth really was. Additionally, Europe and Spain became exposed to the Americas which resulted in trade opportunities and colonization of the new world – opportunities that still act like a beacon that draws people from all over the world to the Americas today.

Design Considerations



Design and Content

Creating a website design and having enough content for the search engines to crawl needs to be a fine balance. Have you ever wondered why really poor looking websites still rank high? Well the simple truth of the matter is that if you had a website with zero pictures and a whole lot of text you might rank higher than a site that’s crazy with flash and large images even if they look great. The reason is due to the search engine crawlers only being able to read text. So even if you have a wonderful website using great looking flash elements the search engines won’t be able to view them. It’s fairly common knowledge that flash pages can not be crawled at all. I keep talking about flash for a reason so please consider this when creating your website. Even using a bunch of pictures pose a risk to your site. If using a lot of pictures make sure to have your web master add alt tags. This will slightly help to explain to the crawlers what the image is about. So how will this relate to your site?

Balance

Flash elements and images are very nice to have for any site because they are consumer friendly meaning that they look a lot nicer than paragraphs of text. Now having enough of both images and text is a balancing act for any website. Just keep in mind that you are not trying to over load both your potential traveler with a bunch of text and same goes with the search engine crawlers. If the search engine find that you are key word stuffing then they will consider your site spammy and penalize you for it. The trick to figuring out how to lay out a web site is actually simple.

Design it for interested travelers

What I mean here is create a website that you would like to visit if you were interested in a hotel. Any good website will have nice pictures that pertain to the subject. In your case it will be a few nice images of your hotel. Of course you also want to explain all the features of your hotel and services you provide. Any specials, attractions, awards, etc. This will add the text content that search engines can crawl. More often than not, most hotel websites do not contain enough text for search engines to crawl thus lower rankings on various search results. Also keep in mind that when creating text try to incorporate key words into your text. Make it easy to read and don’t force it on people too much. That’s called key word stuffing. Well that’s enough for today.

Online Bedroom Design: A Creativity Exercise



Are you planning on having a house built? Are you planning a renovation on the current place you are living in? Are you planning on getting a vacation home somewhere in your favorite vacation spot? If yes is the answer to any of these questions, you might want to explore the idea of designing a bedroom of your house in advance.

You might want to do it so that it reflects your personality, or perhaps to just find out how creative you can be. You can do it even if you are not an architect or an interior designer; you don’t even need to hire one to do it for you. You can do this yourself, and all you need is a computer, Internet, and an imaginative mind. Yes, you can design a bedroom online.

There are websites out there that specifically deal with online bedroom design. They usually have previews for you to take a look at so you would have an idea on how to go about it. Or, if you are really prepared and would want to do it yourself, that is a legitimate option too. There are three important steps on how to design a bedroom online.

First, you need to see the color combinations you will use. Maybe you would like your room to be painted in blue. What shade of blue? There are hundreds of color combinations of shades of blue. Online bedroom design websites usually offer this option so you can mix and match which paint colors to use. You can also check to see the color combination of the walls with the flooring, ceiling, furniture, so you can have a “color preview” of what your bedroom will look like.

Next is the layout design. How big will your bedroom be? Where exactly will you place the furniture and other items such as the television, study table, restroom, doors, windows, and more? How big of the total space will they consume? You can answer all of these by properly designing the layout of your bedroom. If the first step deals with the color combinations, this second step deals with space and measurements. You can check to see how many pieces of furniture you can place and how big they are and if they can fit or not (or if they are ideal or not).

Finally, the design plan itself. Calculate your total expenses by placing all the necessary information in a design plan. Included here are the sizes of the doors, windows, flooring, amount of paint to be used, etc. When you complete these necessities, you will have an idea of how much you will spend for the construction of your bedroom. The design plan is not only important for the calculation of expenses, but also for the exact data of your room – you will know every detail there is.

You might want to venture into designing your own bedroom online. It is a creative exercise and the satisfaction you will receive when the finished product is revealed while knowing that you were the one that designed it cannot be put into words. Whatever your motive is in designing your own bedroom, whether it is to reflect your personality or so you can test your creativity, it will be a fun thing to do. Remember, it is simple enough that all you need is a computer, Internet, and an imaginative mind.

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