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Originally Posted by Wolferz
IAll I know is he ended up dead from an STD that he freely distributed to the natives he encountered.
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In that case all you know is wrong. People at the time claimed he died from gout, which was a catch-all for various diseases of the joints. Modern suspicion is that he died from Reiter's Syndrome, which can be aquired through STDs or through intestinal bacteria. Therefore there's an equal likelihood he got it through food poisoning. While your hypothesis is certainly possible, you don't know it at all.
Also against that is the fact that while the Spaniards certainly brought a lot of diseases to the Americas against which the natives had no defense, none of them were STDs. The accusation in that quarter is that the explorers brought Syphilis, Chlamydia and Gonorrhea back to Europe rather than the other way around.
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Sure, some say he discovered America but I think Leif Ericson and Americo Vespucci might beg to differ.
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Leif Erikson did establish a settlement in Canada, but it didn't last, the colonists abandoning the venture after a couple of years. Stories of settlements in middle America are nonsense. Vespucci did have the land named for him by a German cartographer, but it was Columbus who spread the word and started the wave of settlement that brought us to where we are today. He deserves full credit for the discovery.