“Terra! Earth!”. Since the crew headed by Christopher Columbus aboard the famous three caravels he exclaimed these words and touched the mainland for the first time after more than two months of navigation, exactly 527 years have passed. It was in fact on October 12, 1492 when for the first time in history men from Europe touched the soil of what we now know as the American continent, initially known as the New World at the time. You leave at six in the morning on August 3, 1492 from Palos de la Frontera, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria landed after two months of navigation (actually with a break of almost a month to solve problems with the Pinta boat) on the beaches of an island immediately called San Salvador, and which today with all probability belongs to the archipelago of the Bahamas.
The island was actually vaguely sighted already on 11 October, but it was only at two in the morning on Friday 12 October 1492 that Rodrigo de Triana, aboard the Pinta, finally distinguished the coast. On the morning of 12 October 1492 the caravels managed to find a passage in the reef and the crews managed to land on an island called, in the local language, Guanahani. The Spanish crew, led by the Genoese navigator, was welcomed with great courtesy and condescension by the Tainos, the tribe inhabiting the island. Columbus himself, in his report, repeatedly underlines the kindness and peaceful spirit of his guests. Things changed slightly, as we know, in the following decades, when Spain and other European countries started a ferocious colonization.
Columbus' expedition (which was followed by three more) was completed with the discovery of other islands in Central America: on the evening of October 27, the caravels arrived in Cuba and a few days later the northern coast of Haiti was explored, christened "Hispaniola". . The Genoese navigator therefore accomplished a great feat, effectively "discovering" the American continent which at the time was unknown to Europeans, even if he he was convinced for a long time that he was actually in Japanperhaps in some outpost of the great Asian civilization described by Marco Polo. Columbus Day was established in 1869 to celebrate Columbus' feat in the United States, and today it is also celebrated in Spain and South America.
