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.
New World
The Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term "Orbe Novo" (literally, "New Globe", but often translated as "New World") in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, which began to appear in 1511 (cosmologically, "orbis" as used here refers to the whole hemisphere, while "mundus" refers to the land within it). Peter Martyr had been writing and circulating private letters commenting on Columbus's discoveries since 1493 and, from the start, doubted Columbus's claims to have reached East Asia ("the Indies"), and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them. Only a few weeks after Columbus's return from his first voyage, Peter Martyr wrote letters referring to Columbus's discovered lands as the "western antipodes" ("antipodibus occiduis", letter of May 14, 1493), the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", September 13, 1493), and in a letter dated November 1, 1493, refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor"). A year later (October 20, 1494), Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe ("Novo Orbe") and the "Western hemisphere."("ab occidente hemisphero").