The Columbus Lighthouse – Faro a Colón – was erected in Santo Domingo in honor of this occasion, with an approximate cost of 400 million Dominican pesos.

They are also printed on the front of the 200 Dominican pesos bill.

* In June 2010, The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic announced the introduction of a new polymer based 20 pesos bill.

With a $ 1. 92-billion-a-year tourism industry, Costa Rica stands as the most visited nation in the Central American region, with 1. 9 million foreign visitors in 2007, thus reaching a rate of foreign tourists per capita of 0. 46, one of the highest in the Caribbean Basin, and above other popular destinations such as Mexico ( 0. 21 ), Dominican Republic ( 0. 38 ), and Brazil ( 0. 03 ).

According to a 1999 International Monetary Fund report, remittances from Dominican Americans, are estimated to be about $ 1. 5 billion per year.

The estimated annual per capita income is $ 1, 300 in Haiti and $ 8, 200 in Dominican Republic.

In 2007 the Dominican Republic had a birth rate of 22. 91 per 1000, and a death rate of 5. 32 per 1000.

The country's per capita GDP ( PPP ) was $ 1, 400 in 2008, or less than one-sixth of the Dominican figure.

Musically, the Dominican Republic is known for the creation of the musical style called merengue, a type of lively, fast-paced rhythm and dance music consisting of a tempo of about 120 to 160 beats per minute ( it varies wildly ) based on musical elements like drums, brass, and chorded instruments, as well as some elements unique to the music style of the DR.

Dominicans in Puerto Rico send millions of dollars per month to their relatives in the Dominican Republic, and are thus also important as a source of foreign currency for the D. R.

A German Government report on fuel prices dated 2010 / 11 stated that the Imperial gallon is used as a unit of measure for fuel in Guyana, United Arab Emirates and Antigua and Barbuda and the US gallon in Liberia, Belize, Colombia, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar ( Burma ), Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and the United States.

In Costa Rica in May 1997, former President Carlos Roberto Reina met with former US President Bill Clinton, his Central American counterparts, and the President of the Dominican Republic to reaffirm support for strengthening democracy, good governance, and promoting prosperity through economic integration, free trade, and investment.

In addition to this trade with the US, the coup regime was supported by massive profits from the drug trade thanks to the Haitian military's affiliation with the Cali Cartel and the drug-affiliated government in the neighboring Dominican Republic ; Aristide publicly stated that his own pursuit of arresting drug dealers was one event that prompted the coup by drug-affiliated military officials Raul Cedras and Michel Francois ( a claim echoed by his former Secretary of State Patrick Elie ).

After the fall of Napoleon, not only was Napoleonic Code retained by many such countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Italy and Germany, but has also been used as the basis of certain parts of law outside Europe including the Dominican Republic, the US state of Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec.

René Ramón Sánchez, a legal Dominican Republic immigrant to the US was arrested on July 15, 1995, on a charge of driving while intoxicated ( Driving Under the Influence, or DUI ).

It had the nineteenth highest percentage of Jamaican residents in the US, at 5. 80 % ( which tied with Lake Park, FL ,) and the thirty-ninth highest percentage of Dominican residents in the US, at 3 % of its population.

It had the third highest percentage of Haitan residents in the US, at 23 % of the village's population ( tied with Spring Valley, New York ,) and the sixty-seventh highest percentage of Dominican residents in the US, at 2. 12 % of the its population.

It's also home to the 105th highest percentage of Dominican residents in the US, at 1. 53 % of the population ( tied with Tamiami, Adelphi, Maryland and Dover, NJ ,) as well as being home to the forty-second highest percentage of Peruvians in the US, at 1. 31 % of all residents.

It had the fifty-ninth highest percentage of Cuban residents in the US, at 6. 27 % of the village's population, and the 121st highest percentage of Dominican residents in the US, at 1. 28 % of its population.

) It's also home to the 113th highest percentage of Dominican residents in the US, at 1. 42 % of the population, while it's Romanian community was the twenty-first highest percentage in the US, and accounted for 1. 0 % of all residents ( tied with Davison, Michigan, Thompson, Ohio and Viola, NY.

The Stroessner regime enjoyed close military and economic ties with the United States and supported the US invasion of Dominican Republic and even offered to send troops to support the U. S. in Vietnam.

* While being a U. S. protectorate from 1905 to 1941, the Dominican Republic had first various native regimes, then US military Governors 29 November 1916 – 24 July 1922, and just before it again had the first of its own Presidents on 21 October 1922, a single U. S. High Commissioner, Sumner Welles, who served from 1922 – 1924.

It included COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, which gave between US $ 10 – 25 million to the Foundation.

His compositions discussed current events such as Cuban independence, World War I, the arrival of the airplane, and US occupation of the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement, commonly called CAFTA-DR, is a free trade agreement ( legally a treaty under international law, but not under US law ).

With the addition of the Dominican Republic, the trade group's largest economy, the region covered by CAFTA-DR is the second-largest Latin American export market for US producers, behind only Mexico, buying US $ 15 billion of goods a year.

After an arrest in Costa Rica which saw the US decline an offer by the authorities to extradite Bosch to the United States, he was deported to the Dominican Republic, where June 1976 saw the founding of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations ( CORU ).

Constitutionalist Provisional President Molina Urena and Colonel Caamaño asked the US ambassador for US intervention to stop the Dominican Air Force attacks on the Constitutionalist-held areas.

Rafael Trujillo, the often blood-thirsty dictator of the Dominican Republic for 31 years, perhaps deserved his fate in an even-handed appraisal of history.

It was a sort of poetic justice that at the time of his own demise a new plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government, reportedly involving the use of Dominican arms by former Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, has been uncovered and quashed.

The recent history of the Dominican Republic is an almost classical study of the way in which even a professedly benevolent dictatorship tends to become oppressive.

The Dominican people have known no democratic institutions and precious little freedom for a generation, and all alternative leadership has been suppressed.

The Dominican Republic could turn toward Communist-type authoritarianism as easily as toward Western freedom.

Such a twist would be a tragedy for the Dominican people, who deserve to breathe without fear.

For that reason any democratic reform and effort to bring genuine representative government to the Dominican Republic will need the greatest sympathy and help.

If the Dominican Republic achieves free, democratic government, it will be due in large part to the U.S. show of force that enabled President Balaguer to prevent a threatened restoration of Trujillo dictatorship.

Had U.S. warships not appeared off the Dominican coast, there is every possibility that the country would now be wracked by civil war.

Ultimately either the Trujillos would have been returned to power or the conflict would have produced conditions favorable to a takeover by Dominican elements responsive to Castro in Cuba.

the Colonel fled to the friendly haven of the Dominican dictatorship as soon as Castro seized power.

In some countries the trend has gone further than others: Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela are displaying open sympathy for Castroism, and there is no country -- save the Dominican Republic whose funeral services we recently arranged -- where Castroism and Anti-Americanism does not prevent the government from unqualifiedly espousing the American cause.

The southern arrows bend northward just east of the Dominican Republic before straightening out again.

** Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominican Order.

Worry beads ( masbaha ) made of Dominican Republic blue amber.

Dominican amber, especially Dominican blue amber, is mined through bell pitting, which is dangerous due to the risk of tunnel collapse.

Although all Dominican amber is fluorescent, the rarest Dominican amber is blue amber.

Its most familiar representative is Dominican amber.

Dominican amber differentiates itself from Baltic amber by being mostly transparent and often containing a higher number of fossil inclusions.

Resin from the extinct species Hymenaea protera is the source of Dominican amber and probably of most amber found in the tropics.

* 1863 – The Dominican Restoration War begins when Gregorio Luperón raises the Dominican flag in Santo Domingo after Spain had recolonized the country.

* 1883 – The first public performance of the Dominican Republic's national anthem, Himno Nacional.