October 13 (2008) is Columbus Day in the United States. The holiday, celebrated on the second Monday in October, commemorates the landing of Christopher Columbus and his party on the Caribbean island of Hispanola on October 12, 1492.
The first Columbus Day celebration took place in 1792, on the 300th anniversary on the landing. Since then, it has become an annual event and legal holiday. America’s Italian-American communities have also embraced the event and parades are held in “Little Italy” in New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, and other cities on Columbus Day.
(Photo Currier and Ives/Library of Congress)
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