Discovery Day Discovery Day Discovery Day is the name of several holidays commemorating the discovery of land, gold, and other significant national discoveries. In the Bahamas Discovery Day was a public holiday on October 12, that celebrated the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492. It coincided with the Columbus Day celebrations of many other countries in the Americas. Columbus's initial landfall was on the now-unknown island of Guanahani in the Bahamas in 1492. It was last observed as a holiday in 2012 and has been replaced by National Heroes Day holiday, which is a public holiday observed on
Columbus Day strain of criticism of Columbus Day focuses on the character of Columbus himself. In time for the 2004 observation of the day, the final volume of a compendium of Columbus-era documents was published by the University of California, Los Angeles's Medieval and Renaissance Center. It stated that Columbus, while a brilliant mariner, exploited and enslaved the indigenous population. Spelman College historian Howard Zinn described some of the details of how Columbus personally ordered the enslavement and mutilation of the native Arawak people in a bid to repay his investors. Journalist and media critic Norman Solomon reflects, in "Columbus Day: A