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.
North Ludlow Beamish
After quitting Hanover Beamish devoted much attention to Norse antiquities, and in 1841 published a summary of the researches of Professor Carl Christian Rafn, relative to the discovery of America by the Northmen in the tenth century. Although the fact had been notified as early as 1828 (in a letter in Niles' Register, Boston, U.S.), it was very little known. Beamish's modest volume not only popularised the discovery by epitomising the principal details in Rafn's great work "Antiquitates Americanæ" (Copenhagen, 1837), but it contains, in the shape of translations from the Sagas, one of the best summaries of Icelandic historical literature anywhere to be found within an equal space. Beamish, like his younger brother, Richard, who was at one time in the Grenadier guards, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an associate of various learned bodies.