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Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer.

Vespucci made a voyage to Brazil in Portuguese service, which left Lisbon in 1501. He explored the Patagonian coast and named Rio de Janeiro and the River Plate.

On his return to Lisbon, Vespucci wrote in a letter to d'Medici that the land masses they explored were much larger than anticipated and different from the Asia described by Ptolemy or Marco Polo and therefore, must be a New World ie. a previously unknown fourth continent, after Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The geographer Martin Waldseemüller was so impressed that he coined the name America in honour of Amerigo Vespucci on a map in 1507. He later decided he was wrong and that the credit for discovering the New World really belonged to Columbus. He removed the name America from his map of 1513, but too late. It had caught on and suggested alternatives like Atlantis and Columbiana never displaced it.

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13y ago

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