Well exactly - it was his dumb luck that anything was there at all. He was aiming for something that didn’t exist (there), but luckily for him there was not only land in his path, but so much land that he couldn’t possibly miss it. That’s spectacular luck.
We’ve created an elaborate popular mythology that is often mistaken for fact, in which not only was he not an idiot, but everyone else in Europe was an idiot, to justify lionizing him. (Specifically: that “everyone” thought the world was flat then, but he knew the world was round, and that’s why he headed West to India. He’s a cool, smart rebel in the story, fighting against stodgy, wrong received wisdom of the old country and succeeding because of it.) A lie I was taught as a child in school, no less. I hope they’re no longer teaching kids that story, but given the state of education… probably.
