On this day 530 years ago Christopher Columbus and the crew of his three ships saw a flock of seabirds in the sky, a reed floating in the water and something wooden that seemed to have been carved with an iron tool. After nearly five weeks at sea they were on the verge of landfall.

He was in the Caribbean, near an island now in the Bahamas. In the three voyages that followed he would never set foot on the North American mainland.

But had he come ashore yesterday, he might have seen some extraordinary sights: parades in his honour, a national holiday in his name and at the same time a huge debate over whether statues in his likeness ought to be left on

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