Exploration

Amerigo Vespucci

n Italian navigator, Vespucci (Latin: Americus Vespucius) was born in Florence, 1454. At the age of 41 he took over a business in 1495 in Seville, supplying furnishings to ships voyaging to the West Indies. Thereafter, he set out for the New World himself, and on his first voyage, from 1497 to 1498, claimed to have reached North America. It seems he went on 4 expeditions, which has been discovered by relics such as his maps and accounts.

Although many scholars doubt these claims, they do agree that on his expedition from 1499 to 1500, Vespucci and Spanish soldier Alonso de Ojeda explored a part of the North coast of South America. They also tend to agree that on a different voyage he explored some of South America's eastern coast, going as far afield as Rio de la Plata. As Vespucci was the first Explorer to say that South America was not a part of Asia but an entirely separate continent, Martin Waldseemuller (a German geographer and cartographer, who also translated Vespucci's account of his travels in 1507) suggested the continent be named America, and later North America was also encompassed in that name. Vespucci died in 1512.

The Americas were later known as the 2 Western continents, after a planisphere by Waldseemuller was brought to light in 1516.