While Armstrong’s brief dalliance with the lunar surface left little but footprints preserved for posterity by the moon’s exosphere, Columbus’ landfall in 1492 resonates throughout the ages. Michael Agovino OctoColumbus Day controversy In Italy, Columbus Day has been officially celebrated as a holiday every year since 2004.Īs an Italian-American, a first generation college graduate, an educator, and proud New Yorker… I am fundamentally against #ColumbusDay I am proud to have been interviewed… La Voce does great work. In recent years, Latin American residents in Spain have brought the colour and music of their own celebrations to the Spanish capital. Spain, whose purse strings funded Columbus’ expeditions, celebrates its National Day on 12 October with a military parade in Madrid but although a national holiday it is not widely marked across the country. Argentina for example celebrates a “Day of Respect of Cultural Diversity” while Peru marks “Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue Day.” Venezuela changed the name of its celebrations in 2002 from Día de la Raza to “Day of Indigenous Resistance” while Colombia, named after the polarizing figure, celebrates “Day of the Race and Hispanicity” In Latin America Columbus Day was variously marked as Día de la Raza (Day of the Race) until recently, when several countries began embracing other approaches to marking a day that some see as a landmark for human exploration but many others view as the advent of human exploitation. Many states and cities do not recognise Columbus Day and have replaced celebrations recording the discovery of the Americas with Indigenous People’s Day festivities instead. However, while the Italian-American community’s adherence to Columbus Day remains strong, it has been widely shunned across the US following a groundswell of disaffection and widespread public shift towards commemorating indigenous history. Originally observed on 12 October, in 1971 Columbus Day was assigned to the second Monday of October. New York-based Italian-Americans held celebrations on 12 October, 1866, but it was not until 1937 that it became a federal holiday. WPXI OctoColumbus Day in the United StatesĬolumbus Day was first celebrated in the US in 1792 according to records, when the Tammany Society in New York and the Massachusetts Historical Society marked the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Americas. Some five weeks later, the Italian adventurer would secure his place in history as he made arguably the most impactful step for humankind until Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon nearly five centuries later.Īn Italian heritage group is vowing to appeal a judge’s ruling that Pittsburgh officials can remove a 13-foot statue of Christopher Columbus from a city park. Sailing under the royal standards and with the patrimony (and funding) of the Catholic Monarchs Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragón, Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera in Huelva and stopped at the Canary Islands before setting out into the vast expanse of the Atlantic from San Sebastián de La Gomera. He did, though, change the course of history. Although the 41-year-old had correctly surmised the world was a sphere and not flat, as a majority of scholars of the time insisted, he did not anticipate colliding with the Americas en route to the Far East. For Columbus, a Genoese seafarer and navigator seeking a shorter route to the spice-rich East Indies, it was a case of being in the wrong place at the right time. On 12 October, 1492, the culmination of a three-month voyage took place when Christopher Columbus and crew members of his flagship La Santa María waded ashore on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.
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