Amerigo Vespucci Research Paper

Amerigo Vespucci was born on March 9th, 1454 in Florence, Italy. When he was a boy, he collected and read books and maps. In 1492, Vespucci went to Spain and took up a job working on ships, eventually leading to his first expedition (Hollingsworth & Philbrick), thus fueling his love for exploring. To be the greatest explorer or navigator in European history you must have a considerate amount of accomplishments, a large number of expeditions and have changed the world in some way. Though he was not the first to discover America, Amerigo Vespucci was by far the greatest European explorer because of the number of expeditions he went on, the amount of substantial accomplishments he made and the legacy he left behind.

First, Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo made several expeditions, crossing ocean after ocean. During these expeditions, it was then that he made the majority of his discoveries. Vespucci founded a system for finding nearly exact longitude lines. The system was founded on Vespucci's second journey. (Moyer). Vespucci became the first international explorer to accept the fact that South America was a new continent, separate from Asia. Prior to Vespucci, the world believed that South America was part of Asia. Vespucci disagreed with many prior estimations of the Earth's circumference. He made very accurate calculations of the Earth's circumference, which were less than 50 miles off (Hollingsworth & Philbrick). On Vespucci's third voyage, he sent two very important letters to his close friend, Lorenzo, the ruler of Florence, Italy. In these letters, Amerigo wrote about his travels, the people he encountered and the lifestyle he lived. He identified North and South America as a separate continent than Asia, something that was commonly mistaken prior. (Moyer). Vespucci wrote “... my writing, which is touching things never before written upon by ancient or modern writers, as still will be seen” (Vespucci 46). Here, Vespucci talks about his journey. He tells about how he had encountered people and things that no one had ever before encountered, let alone

It is believed that Christopher Columbus is because he was the first man to discover America and he was intelligent. After Columbus set sail on August 3rd, 1492, his first stop was the Canary Islands, where he was grounded for a month. (Bourne & Hank) Columbus was the first to find America, which he believed was Asia. (Bourne & Hank) He sailed in order to find riches such as gold and silver and he kept two journals, one with real distances and one with false distances, which was a very clever idea (Bourne & Hank). Columbus made an inaccurate map of the New World (Bourne & Hank). In reality, nearly all of Columbus’s work was inaccurate (Bourne & Hank). Amerigo questioned Columbus, his accountability and his accuracy (Bourne & Hank). Vespucci said he could not travel the vast of a distance across the world and reach India in as little time as a month (Bourne & Hank). Vespucci said that Earths diameter was 107.3 km when Vespucci believed it was 91.2 km. (Bourne & Hank).Vespucci proved Columbus wrong in this manner and others as