Amerigo Vespucci was a merchant, an italian sailer, at the service of the King of Spain and then of the King of Portugal Manual I. He was born in Florence on March 9, 1451, and died in Seville on February 22, 1512.
He is regarded as the first European to have understood that the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus, were a new continent, a New World. It Is the geman cartographer, Martin Waldseemuller, that in a publication from 1507, published in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, France, which used his name to designate the new continent. Vespucci was immediately sought to usurper, although the printed text to Sain-Die (la Lettera), has been shown to be subsequently a false, written by a florentine.
In fact, Christopher Columbus and him were friends until the death of the first, in 1506, and there was never any dispute between them.
Amerigo Vespucci made several trips to the Indies and sailed along the coast of the south american continent until the Tierra del Fuego. Became responsible for many astronomical records and the certainty that the territories discovered by Christopher Columbus, were not in Asia, but rather a New World.
