Christopher Columbus text message story: Columbus shares his location
A short, funny WeChat-style chat starring Christopher Columbus (1451 to 1506), Genoese navigator, with his queen and his navigator. He is the patron saint of confidently sending the wrong location, and the people waiting at the other end have questions.
Read the chat
- Chris: I have arrived. sending my location
- Isabella: that is not India
- Chris: it is very close to India
- Navigator: Captain, it is a different ocean
- Chris: it is a lovely ocean
- Isabella: where are you
- Chris: a new place. I will call it India
- Navigator: there are people already living here
- Chris: then I will say hello
- Isabella: bring spices
Free to try, no account needed until you export.
Who was Christopher Columbus?
- In 1492 he sailed west from Spain with the backing of the Spanish crown and reached islands in the Caribbean.
- He believed he had reached the outer edge of Asia, which is why the islands became known as the West Indies.
- The islands were already home to the Taino and other peoples.
The chat is invented. Christopher Columbus never sent these messages, and the story is labelled as fiction wherever it appears.
How this chat is built
It runs 10 messages between Chris and Isabella and Navigator. Chris writes 5 of them. The longest line is “a new place. I will call it India” (Chris) and the shortest is “bring spices” (Isabella). The word “india” comes back 3 times, which is where the rhythm of the joke comes from. It closes on “bring spices” from Isabella.
It is shown in the WeChat look , one of the WeChat-style chat tools. In the editor you can switch it to any other look and the whole conversation follows.