Oh Say, Can You See?

Today’s lesson is about who really discovered America. I remember when I was younger a friend of mine came to me with this question.

- Do you know who discovered America?

Obviously it’s was trick … I just knew it, but I still answered “Christopher Columbus”!!!
Then my friend replied : “No, it is Amerigo Vespucci”. He had to be wrong. So I told him that I trusted my history teacher more than I trust him on this subject, but then he told me something that I couldn’t deny … it’s been discovered by Christopher Columbus, how come isn’t called Columbia ?

I was in big trouble. The closest thing to Internet at the time was my father; he was the one with all the answer and even him couldn’t answered my question properly. A few years later I had the chance to read a bit about my good friend Amerigo. Now I don’t recall exactly what the books was about (in fact I cant even remember what I did yesterday), so I’ve grab this from wikipedia to explain my point :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci

In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent "America" after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to usurp Christopher Columbus's glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci has led to the view that the early published accounts were fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others.

Soooooooo, it wasn’t Amerigo that discovered America. Still I find very interesting to at least know where the name is coming from.

So if a you ever encounter someone that ask you the same question, you will know what to answer : Viking (Gunnbjörn Ulfsson first sighted Greenland in the early 900s)