San Salvador

Capital of El Salvador and of San Salvador department; situated at the foot of San Salvador volcano (2,548 m/8,360 ft) on the River Acelhuate, 48 km/30 mi from the Pacific Ocean; population (2005) 507,700. Industries include coffee, food-processing, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. One-third of the country's industrial output comes from the city. Founded in 1525, it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1854 and rebuilt on the present site. It is now a modern city with architecture conditioned to seismic activity, to which the region is prone, although many buildings collapsed during a further earthquake in 1986.

It was capital of the Central American Foundation 1831–38, and became the national capital in 1839.

San Salvador

Island in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean Sea, said to have been the island where the explorer Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World in 1492; length about 19 km/12 mi, width about 10 km/6 mi; area 168 sq km/65 sq mi; population (2000) 970. Tourism is the principal industry and the largest settlement is Cockburn on the west coast of the island.

It is thought that the island was originally inhabited by Lucayan Indians who called it Guanahani (although some scholars argue that the site of Guanahani, where Columbus made his first landing in the New World on 12 October 1492, is in fact Samana Cay to the southeast of San Salvador). In the 17th century a pirate named John Watling renamed it Watling's Island and the government of the Bahamas restored the name San Salvador in 1926. Celebrations on the island in 1992 marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival.

There was a US military installation in the north of the island in the 1950s and early 1960s, but this was closed in the late 1960s.