For the next few weeks we'll be looking at the "discoverers" mentioned in the 1937 George Gershwin tune "They All Laughed" (with lyrics by his brother Ira).

    The gist of the song is that people laughed at all these pioneers -- who turned out to be right -- just as they're laughing at the singer for wanting to be with his girl.

    The first lines are: "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus / When he said the world was round ..."

    Every schoolchild in America learns the mnemonic rhyme, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue" (though some wags tried to confuse their chums with "In 1493 Columbus sailed the deep blue sea").

    Anyway, this much is true. In 1492, the Italian explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus (about 1451-1506) sailed on behalf of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain. He was trying to discover a shorter route to "the Indies," the area of South and Southeast Asia, so called because for the most part they were within the Indian culture sphere. (Vietnam, however, was culturally aligned with China.)

    If he were successful, Spain would be able to enter the spice trade, taking the lead over other nations which had excelled in developing trading in this rich commodity.

    Now, this is important: "They" did NOT laugh at Columbus for saying that "the world was round." In fact, the spherical shape of the earth was a well-established fact in Columbus's day. It had been known by educated Europeans from the time of Aristotle. It was American author Washington Irving who made up the myth that the people of Columbus's time thought the world was flat.

    The only mistake Columbus made was that he thought the earth's circumference was about a quarter smaller than it really was (30,000 km instead of the actual 40,000). He also didn't know that there was a landmass, now known as North and South America, between Europe and Asia.

    And so, in seeking a quicker way to what we now call the "East Indies," Columbus and his three little boats--the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria--stumbled on the West Indies. The rest, as they say, is history.

    Vocabulary: Which word above means:

    1. representing

    2. connected (to)

    3. strategy used to remember something

    4. Distance around a circle or sphere

    5. pals; friends

    6. main part of something, essence

    7. continent or large island

    8. person with a mischievous sense of humor

    9. area with a common or related culture

    10. item that is traded

    ANSWERS: 1. on behalf of 2. aligned (with) 3. mnemonic 4. circumference 5. chums 6. gist 7. landmass 8. wags 9. culture sphere 10. commodity