OSCAR WILDE

COLUMBUS DAY

What is Columbus Day all about?

Celebrated the second Monday of October, Columbus Day is day set aside to commemorate Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Americas on October 12, 1492. It is also a day to celebrate the role Italian immigrants have played in making the United States great.

How did Columbus Day become a holiday?

Three hundred years passed between Columbus's discovery of the America and the first known celebration of that discovery. In 1792, a group called the Colombian Order organized a ceremony in New York City to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the new world. After the Civil War, a group of Italian immigrants in New York organized the first real celebration of that discovery. In the years that followed, other groups of Italian immigrants did likewise.

What makes Columbus Day controversial?

Although Columbus Day continues to be a national holiday, it is not without controversy. Some biographers have described Columbus's initial mission as a quest "for gold, for God, and for glory." Yet somewhere along the way, something went tragically awry. As Columbus set his sights on the riches the New World had to offer, his professed concern for the souls of the natives seemingly vanished. First came the enslavery of native populations, then genocide. Within four years of the time Columbus set foot on San Salvadorian soil, his men had killed or exported a full third of the native population. Columbus's own journals include graphic accounts of torture and violence perpetrated against the men, women, and children who greeted him in peace. Four decades of such exploitation resulted in the culture's virtual extinction.

SESAME STREET NEWS FLASH: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS