Columbus Day is the annual U.S. commemo-ration of explorer Christopher Columbus' landing in the New World (at San Salvador Island, also known as Waitling Island, today part of the British Bahamas) on October 12, 1492. Columbus was not the first European to cross the Atlantic successfully. Viking sail-ors are believed to have established a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland sometime in the 11th century, and scholars have ar-gued 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.
A number of nations celebrate this encounter with annual holidays: among them are Discov-ery Day in The Bahamas and Colombia, Día de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Day) in Spain, and Día de la Raza (Day of the Race) in much of Latin America. In 1971, Congress moved the U.S. holiday from October 12 to the second Monday in October to afford workers a long holi-day weekend. In the United States, Columbus Day is typically a celebration of Italian and Italian-American cultural heritage, Columbus generally being considered a native of Genoa, Italy.
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