Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas

Before dawn on October 12, 1492, after roughly five weeks sailing west from the Canary Islands, a lookout aboard the Pinta finally sighted land. Christopher Columbus went ashore on a small island its Indigenous Lucayan inhabitants called Guanahani. He claimed it for the Spanish crown and renamed it San Salvador.

Columbus believed he had reached the outskirts of Asia. He had not; he had blundered into the Bahamas, a chain of islands no European had charted. The exact landing site is still debated, with as many as ten islands proposed, though present-day San Salvador remains the leading candidate.

“It was not until two hours after midnight, the 12th of October, that land finally did appear.”

The encounter opened a permanent and often catastrophic link between two hemispheres, reshaping populations, diets, and empires. For the Lucayans who greeted him, it was the beginning of the end.