Chinese Discover America in 1418

So what. The Chinese own the world?! They already make everything that Wal-Mart sells (which, since seeing a piece on PBS, I refuse to buy any product from). They already 'own' every 19th and 20th Century industry (textiles, electronics, will-work-for-dirt-labor to build anything, and watch out GM!). Luckily we still own the next few generations' worth of important industry. And luckily our military could bomb them back to the Era of Warring States (yes I specialized in Chinese history when at school in Boston, go Sox).

But still, is it not enough that they have three times our population? Now they want to lay claim to discovering the Americas?! That seriously gets my scottish white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ire up. And if the movie Braveheart proved anything, it's don't piss off an angry, drunk Scots (I'm delayed at O'hare as of this entry and I'm very PISSED off. And I'm sitting in the Red Carpet Club in F Concourse. So that means I'm drunk). From the BBC:

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.

If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival.

You know what, LET it be true. LET the Chinese claim the discovery of America. That would give us as much right to hold over their heads our tremendous relative advancement as we currently do over the Europeans. Well aside from the fact that the Chinese are to the United States what the Ostragoths (or perhaps the Visigoths) were to Rome. I mean really, you had rockets in 500BC? And you are just NOW going into sub-orbit? What is WRONG with you?

The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts.

Chinese characters written beside the map say it was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and copied from a map made in the 16th year of the Emperor Yongle, or 1418.

It clearly shows Africa and Australia.

The British Isles, however, are not marked.

Of course not! If that were the case, then it would imply that the Chinese discovered Britain before the reign of Elizabeth I. We couldn't possibly tolerate the discovery Britain by the Chinese a full 400 years before the fine English race enslaved the Chinese in an opiate-enduced orgy of imperialism! Perish the thought and pass the tea!

The Australians don't care much at all, obviously. They accept the fact that their entire race was the product of exiled convicts from the rest of the Empire. And yes, I use the word Empire to denote the British Empire. Let's face it, that was the last political entity to deserve the name. Bully!