Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence in 1454 and was a navigator, explorer, and cartographer fundamental to the history of geographical discoveries. He initially worked for Spain and later for Portugal, completing several voyages across the Atlantic Ocean.
Unlike Christopher Columbus, Vespucci was the first to realize that the discovered lands were not part of Asia, but instead formed a new and separate continent. He called these lands the New World (Mundus Novus). Thanks to this revolutionary insight, the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller proposed naming the new continent America in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. He died in 1512 after having forever changed the map of the world and the geographical knowledge of his era.
