Columbus Day

"Your Highnesses, as...princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone."

-Journal of Christopher Columbus
Friday, 3 August 1492

Find more of Columbus' Journal here.