Columbus makes landfall in the Bahamas
After a five-week trade-wind passage from the Canaries, Columbus's three ships raised an island in the Bahamas that its inhabitants called Guanahaní. Which modern island this was has never been settled — San Salvador (Watlings Island) and Samana Cay are the leading candidates — and the surviving evidence is an abstract of the journal made by Bartolomé de las Casas rather than the original. The date is Julian, as recorded. What began that day was not a discovery of a route to Asia, which is what Columbus believed he had achieved, but sustained biological contact between hemispheres separated for millennia.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Christopher Columbus · person · Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean · not located
- The Atlantic crossing (Carrera de Indias) · route · North Atlantic — Andalusia and the Canaries to the Caribbean, returning via the Gulf Stream and the Azores · not located
- The Atlantic wind and current system · natural phenomenon · Atlantic Ocean, both hemispheres · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
Establishes the biological framing of post-1492 contact — crops, livestock and pathogens moving between hemispheres — used throughout this pack. V55 verification basis: this session had no outbound network access (WebFetch blocked by egress policy, WebSearch budget exhausted), so the book was not consulted; the citation is given from the author's knowledge and the work is a standard, widely held title that a curator can verify in any research library catalogue.
Greenwood Press · 1972 · Partly verified
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972)
Recorded on Christopher Columbus
- Columbus makes landfall in the Bahamas
- The Treaty of Tordesillas divides the ocean
- The Casa de Contratación is established at Seville
- Urdaneta finds the return route across the Pacific
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.