Historians have completely befouled the reasons for Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506)
returning to the New World on three subsequent voyages following his triumphant
first landing in the Bahamas archipelago.  Crossing the Atlantic, blown by the trade winds, Columbus went in search
of spices and other riches. In those days, it was important for big time
sailors to keep up appearances and, toward this end, Columbus always wore socks
that were both distinctive and (even at 15^th C. prices)
expensive.  During the somewhat primitive
onboard laundering procedures, his socks would often wash out into the sea
through the deck holes on the carrack Santa Maria, thus becoming lost at
sea.  Typically, only one of a pair would
disappear and, by the time of his return to Spain, fully 75% of his precious
sock collection was made up of a single sock with its mate missing.  His three return trips were prompted by his
desire to find his missing socks which he hoped the trade winds may have washed
up either in the Greater or Lesser Antilles (trips two & three) or on the
Caribbean coast of Venezuela (trip four).  Naturally, he never admitted to his Spanish benefactors that he wanted
to go back to look for his missing socks.

The British king Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) has advanced into history in modest infamy
due to his six successive wives, supposedly due to his frantic concern that he
sire a male heir.  For some reason,
historians tend to pompously sniff at the obvious actual reason, which was his
wives’ ineptness at managing the palace laundry staff that kept losing his
socks.

Many today believe that William Shakespeare (1564 -1616) was the greatest writer to ever
live, yet even he, like Dante before him, suffered an editor.  In the Bard’s initial draft of his play
Richard III, the king was obsessed with his missing socks, crying “Find my
other sock! Bind my wounds!” in Act V, iii, 178, and “My missing sock! My
missing sock! My kingdom for my missing sock!” in Act V, iv, 7.  Sock was later changed to “horse” at the
insistence of his editor, much to the chagrin of the poetic clothes hound. 

More
to come.