This day in History: Columbus makes landfall in The Bahamas

On this day in Caribbean history, October 12, 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus made landfall in what is now the Bahamas believing he had reached East Asia. Columbus and his ships landed on an island that the native Lucayan Taino people called Guanahani re-naming it San Salvador. He describes San Salvador as “very flat, with very green trees,” and a “very large lake in the middle.” His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. In 1986 a team of National Geographic Society scientists, using computer simulations to re-evaluate the data, concluded that Columbus had landed first at Samana Cay. A year later, however, an oceanographer and computer scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute challenged the scientists’ estimates of wind and water currents and placed Columbus within sight of Watling Island on the morning of October 12, 1492.