Amerigo Vespucci

An Italian sailor by the name of which was called America. He was born March 9, 1451 in Florence, and died February 22, 1512 in Seville, Spain. Amerigo was educated and studied with his uncle Anthony Vespucci, a famous scientist. In 1490 he travelled as a merchant in Spain, where in Seville he enrolled in the Italian trade office. As in, the care of this office was the equipment of the second and third voyages of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci had the opportunity to meet Columbus and finally decided to openly explore the new part of the world.

In 1499, Vespucci took part in the expedition of Admiral Alonso Goody to Suriname; in June of the following year, he returned to Spain and went to Portugal. Here Vespucci, in all probability, was accompanied in 1499 – 1500, of Pinson, who made the journey to Brazil and the West Indies. In 1501 – 1504. Amerigo Vespucci has taken on the Portuguese ships still two trips to America, during which they examined mainly the Brazilian coast up to Cape Cananea (25° South latitude), perhaps even somewhat to the South. At the insistence of Columbus in 1505 he again he entered the Spanish service, was in 1508 was appointed Chief Navigator to sail to India and received at the same time the rights of Spanish citizenship. The news that in 1507 Amerigo Vespucci made a fifth trip to America, inaccurate.

The proposal to call the New world named Amerigo, was made as it is first proved, Humboldt County, without his knowledge, the German typographer Martin Waldseemuller of Saint-dié in Lorraine. The latest in 1507 in the famous essay, “Cosmographiae introductio, etc.” was printed under the title of “Hylacomylus” description of the journey Vespucci. The proposal of Waldseemuller got soon a universal distribution. In the nineteenth century scientist, Mark tried to prove that the name America comes from the Native American tribe American or from the mountain chain in Nicaragua of the same name, and that Vespucci only later changed his original name Alberico. However, later it was proved the groundlessness of this assumption.