October 12th, 2020
| Web site: | http://www.usa.gov/citizens/holidays.shtml |
Columbus Day is the annual U.S. commemoration of Christopher Columbus's landing in the New World (at San Salvador Island in the Bahamas) on October 12, 1492. Columbus was not the first European to successfully cross the Atlantic. Viking sailors may have established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland sometime in the 11th century, and scholars have argued for a number of other possible pre-Columbian landings. Columbus, however, initiated the lasting encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
