I have gathered several photos dealing with my many activities during the Columbus Quincentenary. Click onto the Gallery for some interesting material. There's a reproduction of Emanuel Leutze's famous painting of "The Departure of Columbus from Palos in 1492" with some explanatory notes. If you want more information on Emanuel Leutze and his Columbus paintings, just scroll further down on this page. You will find a special section on Leutze's "Columbus Connection".
In this portrait gallery, you'll also find a panoramic view of the recreation of the crew of Columbus' first voyage which I did with ninety school children from Columbus Elementary School, Columbus, New Jersey.
In 1989 I participated in a Fly Out with the Nassau Flying Club to San Salvador and Long Island in the Bahamas to explore the various landfall sites of Christopher Columbus. There's a photo of my personal landfall in the gallery.
This is a work in progress, and I will be adding photos periodically. Click here for the tour:
Much more will be included in these pages about the Columbian encounter and exchange, but for now, I would like to direct you to a website which was voted by the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) as one of the 20 best education Websites on the Internet. Created by a colleague, Dr. Thomas C. Tirado of the History Department at Millersville (Pennsylvania) University, the CIRS (Computerized Information Retrieval System), is made up of hundreds of Columbus Quincentenary resources.
Among the contents of the CIRS are six of the seven volumes of my publication, DISCOVERY FIVE HUNDRED. For some reason, the last volume did not get into the system. Nevertheless, DISCOVERY FIVE HUNDRED, Volumes 1 through 6, covering the years 1986 through 1991 are available on the internet through the CIRS project. This series was published through an organization I founded which was known as "The International Columbian Quincentenary Alliance" (ICQA), and the material is catalogued under the "ICQA" label.
You can access 17 issues of "DISCOVERY FIVE HUNDRED" at
NOTE: I have recently uploaded pdf versions of Volume VII, of which #4, the Final Issue of the seven year series is especially valuable as a retrospective on the Columbus Quincentenary, and highly recommended. Click below for full access:
1. "THE MULTI-ETHNIC COLUMBUS"- a speech by Joseph Laufer delivered at the Columbus Chapel, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania on October 8, 1989.
2. "BEYOND TRADITONAL BOUNDARIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF THE MEANING OF THE QUINCENTENARY". By Joseph M. Laufer, M.A. A paper delivered at Millersville University of Pennsylvania for the Columbian Quincentenary Project, "Teaching the Age of Discovery: an Introduction" -- underwritten by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commision - April 19, 1991. This paper discusses the educational importance that the Columbian Quincentenary has to offer to our understanding of the "New" World.
3. "COLUMBUS MYTHBUSTERS" - A pamphlet which consists of a list of comon myths about Columbus and most current facts to counter them.
4. SELECT COLUMBUS BIBLIOGRAPHY - 60 pages of bibliographic material on Christopher Columbus, compiled by Joseph Laufer, and annotated by Dr. Thomas Tirado. 60 pages -- cannot be viewed on the internet, but must be downloaded.
5. REVIEWS OF 14 CHILDREN'S BOOKS ON CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. Reviews by Joseph Laufer.
If you would like to visit the entire (and very comprehensive) CIRS index of materials, you can do so by clicking below:
The painter recognized more for "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and "Westward Ho," Emanuel Leutze, had a special fascination with Christopher Columbus. He painted at least seven portraits of scenes from Columbus' life. In this section you will learn about:
Long before the Columbus Quincentenary, and heatedly during it, and still today, long after it has passed, the debate continues as to the exact location of Columbus' first landing in the so-called "New World". The debate was covered in several issues of Discovery Five Hundred. See, in particular, the "Special Landfall Issue," Volume V, Number 2, Spring, 1990 (Reference ICQA-5-2) and a follow-up article in Volume V, Number 3, Summer, 1990 (Reference ICQA-5-3).
For an excellent summary of the landfall controversy, you are invited to click on to the "Columbus Landfall Homepage."