49 Fun Facts About Columbus Day

What did Columbus name the island its inhabitants called Guanahaní?

San Salvador. Nobody is sure which island it was: Watling Island took the name officially in the 1920s on the strength of its claim, but scholars still argue for several rivals.

Since 1971, on which Monday of October has Columbus Day fallen in the United States?

Second. Until then the holiday sat on October 12 itself; a 1968 law moved it, along with Washington's Birthday and Memorial Day, to a Monday to give workers more three-day weekends.

Which New York group held the first Columbus Day celebration in 1792?

Tammany Society. The club, later the Tammany Hall political machine, toasted Columbus on the landing's 300th anniversary, yet it took its own name from Tamanend, a chief of the Lenape.

Which city hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, the world's fair held to mark 400 years since Columbus's first voyage?

Chicago. The fairground was dedicated in October 1892, in time for the anniversary, but the fair itself did not open to visitors until May 1893, half a year late.

Which president became the first to issue a formal proclamation of Indigenous Peoples' Day, on the same day as Columbus Day?

Joe Biden. His proclamation spoke of a 'centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror' against Native peoples, yet he signed a Columbus Day proclamation the same day rather than replace the holiday.

Colorado replaced Columbus Day in 2020 with a holiday honouring which Italian-born saint?

Frances Xavier Cabrini. An Italian immigrant herself, she founded 67 schools, hospitals and orphanages and was the first US citizen to be made a saint; her day falls a week before the old holiday.

Which president declared a one-time national Columbus Day celebration in 1892?

Benjamin Harrison. His proclamation made schools the centre of the day, and it came the year after an American mob lynched Italian immigrants, deaths for which he paid reparations to Italy.

Which city's 1891 lynching of 11 Italian immigrants preceded the 1892 Columbus Day celebration?

New Orleans. The mob broke into the jail after a trial over the police chief's murder ended without a conviction, and though it included some of the city's leading men, nobody was ever charged.

Which patriotic text was written for the 1892 Columbus anniversary celebrations?

Pledge of Allegiance. Credited to Francis Bellamy of The Youth's Companion, a magazine then selling American flags to schools, it was first recited by children across the country that October.

After lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, which president began proclaiming Columbus Day nationwide every October 12?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. His yearly proclamations made it a day of observance, not a day off: Columbus Day did not become a federal holiday for another three decades.

Which kingdom's ruler was the first to turn down Columbus's plan to reach Asia by sailing west?

Portugal. King John II's advisers judged, rightly, that Columbus had badly underestimated the distance to Asia, and the kingdom was already pursuing its own route east around Africa.

Which president signed the 1968 act that made Columbus Day a federal holiday?

Lyndon Johnson. Most states already honoured Columbus by then; the act made the day federal and, he said, guaranteed government workers at least five three-day weekends a year.

Which Canadian holiday coincides with US Columbus Day?

Thanksgiving. Canadians hold theirs weeks before the American feast, and trace it to explorer Martin Frobisher, whose crew gave thanks in the Arctic in the 1570s, decades before the Pilgrims landed.

Which US service branch marks its birthday on October 13, the day after traditional Columbus Day?

Navy. The date honours a 1775 vote of the Continental Congress to fit out armed ships for a cruise, yet the service only adopted October 13 as its birthday in 1972.

Which city, where Italians arrived with the Gold Rush, claims the nation's oldest continuous Columbus Day parade?

San Francisco. Merchant Nicola Larco started the parade in the 1860s for a community that had come seeking gold, and since 1994 it has marched under a new name, the Italian Heritage Parade.

In the US Virgin Islands, Columbus Day doubles as a friendship day with which other territory?

Puerto Rico. Columbus reached both within days of each other in November 1493, sighting St. Croix and the Virgin Islands and then landing on Puerto Rico, which he named San Juan Bautista.

Which other legal holiday does Virginia mark on the same day as Columbus Day?

Yorktown Victory Day. The British surrender at Yorktown came on October 19, 1781, so Virginia honours the battle that settled the Revolutionary War on the same October Monday.

What does Hawaii call its alternative to Columbus Day?

Discoverers' Day. Hawaii is one of the states that do not observe Columbus Day: the islands gave the date their own name, though it is not an official day off.

Which state skips Columbus Day but takes a late-October day off for its own statehood?

Nevada. By law its governor is 'authorized and requested' to proclaim Columbus Day each year, but the paid holiday that month is Nevada Day, marking statehood on October 31, 1864.

Which city began the practice of celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day, in 1992?

Berkeley. Congress had picked the Bay Area for a 1992 jubilee, with replica ships due to sail through the Golden Gate, and local Native organisers answered by persuading the city to rename the day.

The island Columbus named Hispaniola is shared today by the Dominican Republic and which other country?

Haiti. Spain's colony grew up in the east of the island, but settlers from a rival power took hold in the west and Spain ceded that third in 1697, which is why the two neighbours speak different languages.

In much of Latin America, by what name has October 12 traditionally been known?

Día de la Raza. The name, 'Day of the Race', celebrated the shared heritage of Spain and its former colonies, but Argentina, among others, has since renamed the day to honour cultural diversity instead.

Which Latin American capital took Columbus off his plinth in 2020 and chose a statue of an Indigenous woman to replace him?

Mexico City. The statue left Reforma Avenue two days before planned October 12 protests, officially 'for restoration', and the mayor said moving it was about social justice, not erasing history.

Which country has marked Día de la Resistencia Indígena since 2002?

Venezuela. Hugo Chávez's government turned the meaning of the day around by decree: a date that had honoured the Spanish arrival now honours the peoples who fought it.

Which island group off Africa was Columbus's last stop for repairs and supplies before he crossed the Atlantic in 1492?

The Canaries. He spent about a month there while the Pinta's broken rudder was mended, then took his final departure from Gomera on September 6.

Which Spanish city holds its main fiesta around October 12 for Our Lady of the Pillar?

Zaragoza. On the 12th itself, a vast crowd comes to lay flowers before the Virgin in the Offering of Flowers, a highlight of the fiestas.

On his 1498 voyage Columbus first reached the American mainland, on the coast of which region?

South America. He first took the coast for another island, and only the vast outflow of fresh water from the Orinoco persuaded him that so great a river must drain a continent.

What did Belize rename October 12 in 2021?

Indigenous Peoples' Resistance Day. It replaced Pan American Day, and was first marked under the new name on October 12, 2021, as a deliberate break with what officials called the old holiday's colonial legacy.

Which Caribbean country replaced its Discovery Day holiday with National Heroes Day?

The Bahamas. The swap was pointed: Columbus's first landfall in 1492 was on a Bahamian island, the very event that Discovery Day had celebrated every October 12.

Whose account of the riches of Asia did Columbus study closely while planning his voyage west?

Marco Polo. His book placed Japan far out to the east of China, which helped persuade Columbus that Asia lay a short sail west of Europe; the real distance was about five times his estimate.

Columbus won royal backing in 1492, months after Ferdinand and Isabella captured which last Muslim stronghold in Iberia?

Granada. The monarchs had told him to wait until their war against the Moors was won; the city fell that January, and he signed his contract in the royal camp outside it in April.

Santo Domingo claims Columbus lies in its Columbus Lighthouse, but DNA tests have backed the tomb in which Spanish cathedral city?

Seville. His bones were moved several times over 400 years, across the Atlantic and back, so scientists accept that part of him may lie in each place.

What shape is the Columbus Lighthouse, the 1992 Santo Domingo monument, built in?

A cross. Its keepers say a tomb inside holds Columbus's remains, and the Dominican authorities have never let scientists open it to test the bones.

Which Ecuadorian city hosted the 1990 Indigenous gathering that planned protests against the 1992 Columbus quincentennial?

Quito. Delegates from Native nations across the hemisphere agreed there to turn the anniversary into a year of protest, a plan that led two years later to the first city renaming of Columbus Day.

Which Caribbean island did Columbus take for a peninsula of mainland China?

Cuba. He named it Juana for a Spanish prince, and because he was sure he had reached the Indies he called the islanders 'Indians', a name that outlived the mistake.

Whose A People's History of the United States described Columbus mutilating the Arawak?

Howard Zinn. His history opens not with the explorers but with Arawak men and women swimming out to look at the strange big boat, and tells the landing from their side of the beach.

Which Catholic priest's History of the Indies condemned Spanish cruelty on Hispaniola?

Bartolomé de las Casas. He knew the system from the inside: he had come to Hispaniola as a settler and held Native forced labourers of his own before turning against it.

In which republic was Columbus born?

Genoa. The son of a wool worker there, he went to sea in his teens and found his backers abroad: none of his Atlantic voyages sailed under his home city's flag.

From which port did Columbus sail in August 1492?

Palos. The town owed the Crown a penalty, so the monarchs ordered it to supply two of the three ships, which is how a small river port came to launch the voyage.

Which brothers captained the Pinta and Niña on Columbus's first voyage?

The Pinzón brothers. Martín Alonso and the Pinta slipped away from the fleet for some six weeks in the Caribbean, and Columbus accused him of desertion.

Which lookout was first to sight land on Columbus's 1492 voyage?

Rodrigo de Triana. He never collected the reward: Columbus said he had seen a faint light hours earlier and kept the royal pension promised to the first man to sight land.

Which of Columbus's ships ran aground and was abandoned on Christmas Day 1492?

Santa María. A careless hand at the helm put the flagship on a sandbank on a calm night, and her timbers were stripped to build a fort ashore for the men she could no longer carry home.

What title did the Capitulations of Santa Fe promise Columbus if he succeeded?

Admiral of the Ocean Sea. The deal also promised him a tenth of the riches from any lands he found, terms so generous that the Crown later backed away and his heirs spent years suing to enforce them.

Turned down once more in early 1492, Columbus was already riding toward which country when the queen's messenger called him back?

France. A royal messenger overtook him on the road after treasurer Luis de Santángel warned the queen that a rival crown would take up the plan, and he turned back to sign his contract.

Which animals, unknown in the Americas when Columbus arrived, did his 1493 fleet carry across the Atlantic?

Horses. None had lived in the Americas for thousands of years; the animals that came with the Spanish spread north, and Plains peoples later built a whole way of hunting around them.

Who arrested Columbus and sent him to Spain in chains in 1500?

Francisco de Bobadilla. Two years later he drowned when a hurricane sank most of the fleet taking him home, a storm Columbus had seen coming and warned the colony's governor about.

On which island was Columbus stranded in 1503–04 after running his leaking ships aground?

Jamaica. When the islanders stopped supplying food, he consulted his almanac, announced that the moon would be darkened, and let the lunar eclipse of 29 February 1504 do the rest.

In which Spanish city did Columbus die in 1506?

Valladolid. Ill with gout, he had trailed the royal court from city to city pressing for the titles and revenues he believed he was owed, and he died there in May 1506.

Which Florentine explorer gave his name to two continents?

Amerigo Vespucci. Letters printed under his name described the lands as a new world rather than Asia, and in 1507 the mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller put the name America on his map in tribute.