About: Columbus Day

Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Columbus went ashore at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, on October 12, 1492. On his return in 1493, Columbus moved his coastal base of operations 70 miles east to the island of Hispaniola, what is now the Dominican Republic and established the settlement of La Isabela, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who led a Spanish maritime expedition to cross the Atlantic Ocean in search of an alternative route to the Far East, only to land in the New World. Columbus's first voyage to the New World on the Spanish ships the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, and took about three months.