October 12 - Columbus Day

515 years ago today, at dawn on October 12, 1492, Cristopher Columbus made landfall in "the islands of India beyond the Ganges," also known as the New World. He was pretty surprised not to find any pagodas with golden roofs , but left his crewmen with barrels in which they could put their collections of gold. As you can tell from the above map of Columbus' voyages, Columbus didn't discover the United States. Columbus Day has always been a fairly traditional day to visit a museum. Why not take a few minutes to check out the online exhibition on Christopher Columbus at the Library of Congress?