Today, Friday, March 9, 2011 is the 558th anniversary of the birth of Amerigo Vespucci in Florence, Italy in 1454. He learned business from Leonardo Medici of the Florence House of Medici. In 1492, the year of Columbus’ search for a western route to Asia, Vespucci was dispatched to Cadiz, Spain to a branch office of Medici. While there, he supplied Columbus with beef for one, or maybe two, of his seafaring searches for a new path to the Orient.
Between 1499 and 1502 Vespucci sailed twice, or possibly as many as four times, like Columbus, searching for a western sailing route to Asia. In 1502 a book was published describing his travels. In this book Vespucci was quoted as saying he didn’t believe he had seen Asia, but where he went was actually a new and different land. A map was included in the book showing the eastern coast of the new land which soon was named after him. Amerigo’s given name was used in its feminine version of America, and soon both South and North America were known by those names.
Even though Christopher Columbus was in the new world several years before Vespucci it is the latter’s whose given name is now so familiar.
No comments:
Post a Comment