No, Monday, October 8th, was not Columbus Day. Officially, it was Explorers Day. That's the weenie, non-specific, politically correct substitute for Columbus Day enacted by the same stiffs who took away Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday, replaced them with Presidents Day, and said, "Look, it's on a Monday. Isn't that great?"
The real Columbus Day is October 12. It doesn't celebrate bringing murder, rape, and oppression to the New World. All those things existed here long before Columbus arrived, weren't his purpose, and were practiced far more ruthlessly by the original inhabitants than by Chris and the crew. Columbus Day celebrates courage, determination, and the drive to explore and expand one's world. Those are universal values.
Only a racist views this holiday as celebrating the conquest of one ethnic group by another, because only a racist sees everything in terms of ethnic groups.
I'm slightly (but only slightly) amused by the angry "Native American" professional victims and their supporters who disrupt Denver's Columbus Day Parade every year. With not a trace of irony, they wholeheartedly embrace the European romanticists' notion of the noble savage, and most of them think the politico-economic ideas of European socialists are somehow the heritage of America's "indigenous peoples." Morons.