Who named America? Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci inspired the name via a 1507 map by Martin Waldseemüller. Learn who was ...

__1454: __ Amerigo Vespucci is born in Florence, Italy. He'll give his name to two continents. Vespucci, the son of a notary, went to work for the Medici banking house. They dispatched him as an agent ...

“Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to America, was a pimp in his youth and a magus in his maturity,” writes Felipe Fernández-Armesto in his new biography (Random House, 231 pages, $24.95). His ...

In 1507 a German geographer named Martin Waldseemüller drew two maps of the known world. As research, he used the recent account of Florentine Navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who said he had found a new ...

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Jacki Lyden. Five hundred years ago, a German cartographer gave a name to the newly discovered landmass blocking Europe's western passage to Asia. He ...