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Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci

c. 1454 CEc. 1512 CE · Explorer · Florence

Amerigo Vespucci was a Florentine merchant, navigator, and explorer. Educated by his humanist uncle and later employed in Medici-connected commercial affairs, he relocated to Seville around 1492 and helped outfit ships for Atlantic voyages. Between roughly 1499 and 1502 he took part in expeditions to the coasts of South America, sailing under both Spanish and Portuguese flags. Accounts attributed to him argued that the newly encountered lands formed a landmass distinct from Asia. In 1507 the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller applied the name "America," derived from Amerigo, to the new continent. Naturalized a Castilian subject in April 1505, Vespucci was appointed piloto mayor de Castilla on 22 March 1508 and served in that office at Seville, where he died in 1512.

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Florence

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