Alfred Vellucci
An Italian American, Vellucci was opposed to the idea that Leif Ericcson, rather than Christopher Columbus, discovered America. After a group of scholars from Harvard promoted the claim that Ericcson discovered America, he proposed a motion to the Cambridge City Council that officially renamed Harvard Square to Columbus Square. He also planted a large tree in front of the Harvard Lampoon Building, claiming that it was an eyesore and arguing that the "Harvard Lampoon" had insulted Italian Americans by claiming that the Irish discovered America. He feuded with the "Harvard Lampoon" for years. The paper often satirized him, one issue running an Alfred E. Neuman style picture of him on its cover. On one occasion, he unsuccessfully proposed a city ordinance declaring their headquarters a public urinal.
Early world maps
The cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann from southern Germany, supported by the mapping friend René II, Duke of Lorraine, collected map data over several years, including information on the most recent discoveries, to build up a new collective work of geography and cartography. Along with a book they further incorporated, for the first time in history, the name "America" on a map, holding the strong opinion that it was a new continent that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered on his voyage and not only a few smaller islands as Christopher Columbus did in the "West Indies".
The Piri Reis map is a famous world map created by 16th-century Ottoman Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The surviving third of the map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable. Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia. The map is noteworthy for its apparent south-eastward extension of the American continent to depict a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica. Alternatively, it has been suggested that this is actually a record of the coast as far as Cape Horn, explored secretly by Portuguese navigators before 1507 (when it appeared on the Waldseemüller map) and bent south-eastward simply to fit on the parchment.