Did you know that “America” was named for the Italian cartographer, Amerigo Vespucci, who made the momentous discovery that the place on the far side of the Atlantic was not Asia (as most Europeans thought) but a completely different place?
1492 is indeed the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but it is also famous for being the year of the re-conquest of Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella finally conquered the last Muslim stronghold in Spain and achieved the final Christian victory in the 8 century long struggle between Christianity and Islam in Spain (ever since the Muslims invaded only some 50 years after Muhammad’s death).
Christians today are not commonly aware that Europe was almost taken by the Muslim armies. Islam made three significant incursions into Europe. The first in the 9th century engulfing Spain, Portugal, southern Italy and parts of France (this is what ended in 1492); the second incursion struck Eastern Europe when the Mongol-Tatars conquered Russia. That too was driven back by a Russian Christian re-conquest. The third incursion was under the Muslim Turks who conquered Byzantine Anatolia, the Balkans, and besieged Vienna twice, even
sending their pirating ships as far as the British Isles and Iceland!
For almost 1000 years Islam was a very serious threat to Christian Europe. And 1492 marks a significant victory … lest we forget.
By Fr Josiah Trenham
The following is taken from a comment I posted on Grace’s [excellent] 
“We need to have more respect for each other,” Wonder says, leaning forward for emphasis. “Things have just gone really crazy, out of control. … We’re on a very weird kind of cycle.”
