Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Columbus went ashore at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, on October 12, 1492. On his return in 1493, Columbus moved his coastal base of operations 70 miles east to the island of Hispaniola, what is now the Dominican Republic and established the settlement of La Isabela, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas.
First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World; painting by Dióscoro Puebla (1862)
Stylized graphic from the United States Department of Defense
Columbus Day Parade in New York City, 2009
The former Christopher Columbus Monument along Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico
Our Lady of the Pillar is the name given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the context of the traditional belief that Mary, while living in Jerusalem, supernaturally appeared to the Apostle James the Greater in AD 40 while he was preaching in what is now Spain. Those who adhere to this belief consider this appearance to be the only recorded instance of Mary exhibiting the mystical phenomenon of bilocation. Among Catholics, it is also considered the first Marian apparition, and unique because it happened while Mary was still living on Earth.
The image of Our Lady of the Pillar wearing her canonical crown
Apparition of the Virgin of the Pillar to Saint James and his Saragossan disciples by Francisco Goya, c. 1769
Our Lady of the Pillar by Ramón Bayeu, 1780
The work represents the Virgen del Pilar, patroness of Spain.