Who actually discovered America?
Leif Erikson
Research done in the early 1960s by Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, identified a Norse site located at the northern tip of Newfoundland. It has been suggested that this site, known as L'Anse aux Meadows, is "Leifsbúðir". The Ingstads demonstrated that Norsemen had reached America about 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Later archaeological evidence suggests that "Vinland" may have been the areas around the Gulf of St. Lawrence and that the L'Anse aux Meadows site was a ship repair station and waypoint for voyages there. That does not necessarily contradict the identification of L'Anse aux Meadows with "Leifsbúðir" since the two sagas appear to describe "Vinland" as a wider region which included several settlements. The "Saga of Erik the Red" mentions two other settlements in "Vinland": a settlement called "Straumfjǫrðr", which lay beyond "Kjalarnes" promontory and the Wonderstrands, and one called "Hóp", which was located even farther south.
Leif was described as a wise, considerate, and strong man of striking appearance. During his stay in the Hebrides, he fell in love with a noblewoman, Thorgunna, who gave birth to their son Thorgils. Thorgils was later sent to Leif in Greenland, but he did not become popular.
Alonso Sánchez
After the discovery of America several rumors started to spread especially among the conquistadores, claiming that America had not been discovered by Columbus, but that its existence was known at least 20 years before 1492. Bartolomé de las Casas had indeed heard several of those claims, but limited himself to record them.
Christopher Columbus (1923 film)
Christopher Columbus (German:Christoph Columbus) is a 1923 German silent historical film directed by Márton Garas and starring Albert Bassermann, Elsa Bassermann and Tamara Duvan. It depicts the Discovery of America by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492.
History of cartography
In 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently found the Americas. Columbus's first two voyages (1492–93) reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba. The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange, a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), communicable disease, and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres following the Voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas.
Bantry
As with other areas on Ireland's south-west coast, Bantry claims an ancient connection to the sixth-century saint Breandán (Naomh Bréanainn) the Navigator. In Irish lore, Saint Breandán was the first person to discover America.
History of the west coast of North America
Explorers flying the flag of Spain reached the New World beginning in 1492 with the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. Spanish expeditions colonized and explored vast areas in North and South America following the grants of the Pope (contained in the 1493 papal bull Inter caetera) and rights contained in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas and 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza. These formal acts gave Spain the exclusive rights to colonize the entire Western Hemisphere (excluding eastern Brazil), including all of the west coast of North America. The first European expedition to actually reach the west coast was led by the Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who reached the Pacific coast of Panama in 1513. In an act of enduring historical importance, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean for the Spanish Crown, as well as all adjoining land and islands. This act gave Spain exclusive sovereignty and navigation rights over the entire west coast of North America.
Dawn of America
Dawn of America (Spanish: Alba de América) is a 1951 Spanish historical adventure film directed by Juan de Orduña and starring Antonio Vilar, María Martín and José Suárez. The film depicts the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in the late fifteenth century.
Matthias Ringmann
"There is a fourth quarter of the world which Amerigo Vespucci has discovered and which for this reason we can call 'America' or the land of Americus [the Latin version of the Italian name Amerigo]. […] We do not see why the name of the man of genius, Amerigo, who has discovered them, should not be given to these lands, as Europe and Asia have adopted the names of women."
Tunnel Through the Deeps
In an alternative history, the United States lost the American Revolutionary War and George Washington was executed for treason. Thus, America in 1973 is still under the control of the British Empire. The divergence point between this world and our own occurred far earlier, however, when the Moors won the battle of Navas de Tolosa on the Iberian peninsula, on July 16, 1212. Thus it was that Spain was unable to become unified, owing to the survival of an Islamic presence in its territory, and therefore could not finance the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Instead, it was John Cabot who discovered America, just a few years later.
United States Exploring Expedition
The United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842 was an exploring and surveying expedition of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands conducted by the United States. The original appointed commanding officer was Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones. Funding for the original expedition was requested by President John Quincy Adams in 1828, however, Congress would not implement funding until eight years later. In May 1836, the oceanic exploration voyage was finally authorized by Congress and created by President Andrew Jackson.
France–Americas relations
France–Americas relations started in the 16th century, soon after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, and have developed over a period of several centuries.
Naming of the Americas
Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first postulated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to the Europeans.
History of the United States
Spanish explorers were the first Europeans with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, to reach Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others reached Florida in 1513. Spanish expeditions quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the Southeast.
Alfred Hudd
There are several alternate theories of the naming of America. Alfred Hudd proposed his theory in a paper which was read at 21 May 1908 meeting of the Clifton Antiquarian Club, and which appeared in Volume 7 of the club's "Proceedings". In "Richard Ameryk and the name America," Hudd discussed the 1497 discovery of North America by John Cabot, an Italian who had sailed on behalf of England. Upon his return to England after his first (1497) and second (1498–1499) voyages, Cabot received two pension payments from King Henry VII. Of the two customs officials at the Port of Bristol who were responsible for handing over the money to Cabot, the more senior was Richard Ameryk (High Sheriff of Bristol in 1503). Hudd postulated that Cabot named the land that he had discovered after Ameryk, from whom he received the pension conferred by the king. He stated that Cabot had a reputation for being free with gifts to his friends, such that his expression of gratitude to the official would not be unexpected. Further, Hudd quoted a late 15th-century manuscript (a calendar of Bristol events), the original of which had been lost in an 1860 Bristol fire, that indicated the name America was already known in Bristol in 1497. Hudd reasoned that the scholars of the 1507 "Cosmographiae Introductio", unfamiliar with Richard Ameryk, assumed that the name America, which he claimed had been in use for ten years, was based on Amerigo Vespucci and, therefore, mistakenly transferred the honour from Ameryk to Vespucci. While Hudd's speculation has found support from more than one 21st century author, there is no hard proof to substantiate his theory that Cabot named America after Richard Ameryk.
Earth-Three
Earth-Three was introduced by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky in a 1964 issue of "Justice League of America". Earth-Three's history is depicted as a mirror image to that of the Earth we know. On Earth-Three, Christopher Columbus was American and discovered Europe; England (a colony of America) won freedom in a reversed form of the Revolutionary War (with George Washington surrendering his sword to Charles Cornwallis) in 1774; President John Wilkes Booth was assassinated by actor Abraham Lincoln. Crucially, Earth-Three was home to an analogue to the Justice League, the Crime Syndicate of America.
Juan de Bermúdez
Juan de Bermudez was born in Palos de la Frontera (southern Spain) and was in the 1492 travel of Columbus, when America was discovered.
History of Nova Scotia
Venetian Italian explorer Zuan Chabotto (Italian: Giovanni Caboto) known in English as John Cabot, was the first European explorer to the North American continent whose voyage of exploration ushered irrevocable transformation of global social economic interaction. Caboto/Cabot's voyage received financial backing by Italian banking houses in London and the Bardi family banking firm of Florence. With financing secure and patent issued by Henry VII to Cabot and his three sons, he set sail in 1496. Upon landing on 24 June 1497, Cabot raised the Venetian and Papal banners, claiming the land for the King of England and recognising the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church. After this landing, Cabot spent some weeks "discovering the coast," with most "discovered after turning back." Cabot's expedition is believed to be the first by Europeans to mainland North America since the Vikings five hundred years before. Historian Alwyn Ruddock who worked on Cabot and his era for 35 years suggested Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis and the other friars who accompanied Cobot's 1498 expedition had stayed in Newfoundland and founded a mission which would have made it the first Christian settlement on the continent. Nova Scotia was further explored by the Portuguese explorer João Álvares Fagundes (1520) as he searched south of his fishing settlements in Newfoundland.
Falkner Island
The identity of the first European explorer is unknown, but it was likely the Dutch explorer Adrian Block who sailed through Long Island Sound around 1614. The United States government credits Block as the discoverer. Early English settlers called it "Falcon Island", likely stemming from the Native American name. Helander writes that the island was probably named for the osprey, but the English translation to "Falcon" suggesting the presence of the peregrine falcon was one of "simple ignorance". The island's name on Dutch maps was "Valcken Eylandt". The name later evolved to Faulkner Island, perhaps as a result of the Faulkner family who lived on the island in the 1700s. When the island was transferred to the U.S. government in 1801, the deed states the name as "Faulkners". The U.S. Board on Geographic Names changed and established "Falkner Island" as its name in 1891. However, the name change is not universally recognized and "popular usage" and the Faulkner's Light Brigade that conserves the island's lighthouse use "Faulkner"; including publications.
Exploration of North America
In 1524-1525, Portuguese explorer Estevão Gomes, on behalf of Charles I of Spain, explored present-day Nova Scotia sailing South along the Maine coast. Gomes entered New York Harbor and saw the Hudson River(which he named the "San Antonio River"). Because of his expedition, the 1529 Diogo Ribeiro world map outlines the East coast of North America almost perfectly.
Alonso del Castillo Maldonado
Alonso del Castillo Maldonado (died c. 1540) was one of the first Spanish explorers in the Americas. He was one of the last four survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, along with Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and his African slave Estevanico. They were the first non-natives to travel in the Southwest region of the modern United States. Castillo Maldonado lived with a Native American tribe in Texas in 1527 and 1528.
History of Native Americans in the United States
After 1492 European exploration and colonization of the Americas revolutionized how the Old and New Worlds perceived themselves. One of the first major contacts, in what would be called the American Deep South, occurred when the conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed in La Florida in April 1513. He was later followed by other Spanish explorers, such as Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528 and Hernando de Soto in 1539. The subsequent European colonists in North America often rationalized their expansion of empire with the assumption that they were saving a barbaric, pagan world by spreading Christian civilization.
Antarctigo Vespucci
The band explains their name as a joke: "Amerigo Vespucci is the guy who discovered America so it stands to reason that Antarctigo Vespucci would be the guy who discovered Antarctica."
Atlantic Ocean
Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492 under Spanish flag. Six years later Vasco da Gama reached India under Portuguese flag, by navigating south around the Cape of Good Hope, thus proving that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are connected. In 1500, in his voyage to India following Vasco da Gama, Pedro Alvares Cabral reached Brazil, taken by the currents of the South Atlantic Gyre. Following these explorations, Spain and Portugal quickly conquered and colonized large territories in the New World and forced the Amerindian population into slavery in order to explore the vast quantities of silver and gold they found. Spain and Portugal monopolized this trade in order to keep other European nations out, but conflicting interests nevertheless led to a series of Spanish-Portuguese wars. A peace treaty mediated by the Pope divided the conquered territories into Spanish and Portuguese sectors while keeping other colonial powers away. England, France, and the Dutch Republic enviously watched the Spanish and Portuguese wealth grow and allied themselves with pirates such as Henry Mainwaring and Alexandre Exquemelin. They could explore the convoys leaving the Americas because prevailing winds and currents made the transport of heavy metals slow and predictable.
In the colonies of the Americas, depredation, disease, and slavery quickly reduced the indigenous population of the Americas to the extent that the Atlantic slave trade had to be introduced to replace them — a trade that became norm and an integral part of the colonization. Between the 15th century and 1888, when Brazil became the last part of the Americas to end slave trade, an estimated ten million Africans were exported as slaves, most of them destined for agricultural labour. The slave trade was officially abolished in the British Empire and the United States in 1808, and slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire in 1838 and in the United States in 1865 after the Civil War.
Age of Discovery
The 1497 English expedition led by Italian Venetian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas, as its resources were concentrated in Central and South America where more wealth had been found. These expeditions were hoping to find an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade. This was never discovered, but other possibilities were found, and in the early 17th century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America. In 1520–1521 the Portuguese João Álvares Fagundes, accompanied by couples of mainland Portugal and the Azores, explored Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (possibly reaching the Bay of Fundy on the Minas Basin), and established a fishing colony on the Cape Breton Island, that would last until at least the 1570s or near the end of the century.
Exploration of the Pacific
Alaska and the Russians: The modern period begins with Russian expeditions. They crossed Siberia and reached the Pacific in 1639 (Ivan Moskvitin). In 1644 Vassili Poyarkov found the Amur River. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnyov (probably) entered the Pacific from the Arctic Ocean. In 1652 Mikhail Stadukhin followed the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. In 1697 Vladimir Atlasov entered the Kamchatka Peninsula overland from the north. In 1716 the first seagoing boats were built to reach Kamchatka from the mainland. In 1728 Vitus Bering sailed from Kamchatka through the strait that bears his name without seeing America. In 1732 Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Fedorov (navigator) saw the tip of Alaska from the Bering Strait. In 1741 Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov sailed just south of the Aleutian Islands and reached the Alaska panhandle. Peter Kuzmich Krenitzin mapped the Aleutians before 1769. The myth of a land mass north of the Aleutians took a long time to dispel. Russians fur hunters island-hopped along the Aleutians and then along the south coast of Alaska looking mainly for sea otter (Attu at the west end of the Aleutians in 1745, Unalaska Island at the east end in 1759, Kodiak Island 1784, Kenai Peninsula 1785, Yakutat, 1795, Sitka 1799, Fort Ross 1812). North of the Aleutians posts appeared on the west coast after 1819. Spaniards from Mexico met the Russians in 1788. (see below). Russian America was sold to the United States in 1867.
Captain Cook: On his first voyage (1768–71) James Cook went to Tahiti from Cape Horn, circumnavigated New Zealand, followed the east coast of Australia for the first time and returned via the Torres Strait and the Cape of Good Hope. On his second voyage (1772–75) he sailed from west to east keeping as far south as possible and showed that there was probably no Terra Australis. On his third voyage (1776–80) he found the Hawaiian Islands and followed the North American coast from Oregon to the Bering Strait, mapping this coast for the first time and showing that there was probably no Northwest passage. Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779. The expedition made a second attempt at the Bering Strait, stopped at Kamchatka and China and reached England in 1780. Cook set a high standard of scientific exploration, showed that there was no large land mass in the southern ocean, mapped the two largest island groups in the Pacific and by following the east coast of Australia and the west coast of North America closed the last gaps in European knowledge of the Pacific coasts. After Cook everything was detail.
Italians
Italian explorers and navigators in the 15th and 16th centuries left a perennial mark on human history with the modern "discovery of America", due to Christopher Columbus. In addition, the name of the American continents derives from the geographer Amerigo Vespucci's first name. Also noted, is explorer Marco Polo who travelled extensively throughout the eastern world recording his travels.
Italian Americans
Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Christopher Columbus, the explorer who first reached the Americas in 1492–1504, was Italian. Another notable Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502, is the source of the name America. England's claims in North America were based on the voyages of the Italian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) and his son Sebastian Cabot (Sebastiano Caboto) in the early 16th century. In 1524 the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to map the Atlantic coast of today's United States, and to enter New York Bay.
Lucayan people
In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain with three ships, seeking a direct route to Asia. On October 12, 1492 Columbus reached an island in the Bahamas, an event long regarded as the 'discovery' of America. This first island to be visited by Columbus was called Guanahani by the Lucayans, and San Salvador by the Spanish. The identity of the first American landfall by Columbus remains controversial, but many authors accept Samuel E. Morison's identification of what was later called Watling (or Watling's) Island as Columbus' San Salvador. The former Watling Island was officially renamed San Salvador in 1925. Luis Marden's identification of Samaná Key as Guanahani is the strongest contender with the former Watling Island theory. Columbus visited several other islands in the Bahamas hunting for gold before sailing on to Cuba.
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").
Christopher Columbus
The scholar Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to America in the years following Columbus's first voyage, was the first to speculate that the land was not part of Asia but in fact constituted some wholly new continent previously unknown to Eurasians. His travel journals, published 1502–04, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in 1507—a year after Columbus's death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling the new continent "America" from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus". According to Paul Lunde, "The preoccupation of European courts with the rise of the Ottoman Turks in the East partly explains their relative lack of interest in Columbus's discoveries in the West."
History of North America
Records of European travel to North America begin with the Norse in the tenth century CE. In 985, they founded a settlement on Greenland (an often-overlooked part of North America) that persisted until the early 1400s. They also explored the east coast of Canada, but their settlements there were much smaller and shorter-lived. With the Age of Exploration and the voyages of Christopher Columbus (starting 1492), Europeans began to arrive in the Americas in large numbers and to develop colonial ambitions for both North and South America. Columbus' "discovery" of America is a contested idea because the Americas were already heavily populated by the indigenous Native American peoples, who had developed distinctive civilizations in their own right. After Columbus, influxes of Europeans soon followed and overwhelmed the native population. North America became a staging ground for ongoing European rivalries. The continent was divided by three prominent European powers: England, France, and Spain. The influences of colonization by these states on North American cultures are still apparent today.
Founding Fathers of the United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States, or simply the Founding Fathers, were a group of philosophers, politicians, and writers who led the American Revolution against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Most were descendants of colonists settled in the Thirteen Colonies in North America.
Naming of the Americas
In this view, native speakers shared this indigenous word with Columbus and members of his crew, and Columbus made landfall in the vicinity of these mountains on his fourth voyage. The name America then spread via oral means throughout Europe relatively quickly even reaching the cartographer Waldseemüller who was  preparing a map of newly reported lands for publication in 1507. Waldseemüller's work in the area of denomination takes on a different aspect in this view:The baptismal passage in the "Cosmographiae Introductio" has commonly been read as argument, in which the author said that he was naming the newly discovered continent in honor of Vespucci and saw no reason for objections. But, as etymologist Joy Rea has suggested, it could also be read as an explanation, in which he indicates that he has heard the New World was called America, and the only explanation lay in Vespucci's name.
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.
John Penn (&quot;the American&quot;)
John Penn (January 28, 1700 – October 25, 1746) was a proprietor of colonial Province of Pennsylvania (later the American state – the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after 1776). He was the eldest son of the colony's founder, William Penn (1644–1718), by his second wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn (1671–1726). He was the only one of Penn's children to be born in the New World – the Americas (in the Slate Roof House in Philadelphia) and was hence called "the American" by his family.
Exploration of North America
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral was sent by Portugal to explore South America. He is considered to be the discoverer of Brazil.
Frederick Cook
Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American explorer, physician, and ethnographer, noted for his claim of having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908. This was nearly a year before Robert Peary, who reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Both men's accounts were disputed for several years. His expedition did discover Meighen Island, the only discovery of an island in the American Arctic by a United States expedition.
Naming of the Americas
A Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd suggested in 1908 that the name was derived from the surname "Amerike" or "ap Meryk" and was used on early British maps that have since been lost. Richard ap Meryk, anglicised to Richard Amerike (or Ameryk) ( 1445–1503) was a wealthy English merchant, royal customs officer and sheriff of Bristol. According to some historians, he was the principal owner of the "Matthew", the ship sailed by John Cabot during his voyage of exploration to North America in 1497. The idea that Richard Amerike was a 'principal supporter' of Cabot has gained popular currency in the 21st century. There is no known evidence to support this. Similarly, and contrary to a recent tradition that names Amerike as principal owner and main funder of the "Matthew", Cabot's ship of 1497, academic enquiry does not connect Amerike with the ship. Her ownership at that date remains uncertain. Macdonald asserts that caravel was specifically built for the Atlantic crossing.
Exploration of North America
Aragon King Ferdinand II sent Juan Ponce de León from the fledgling colony on Hispaniola to verify rumors of undiscovered land to the northwest. On April 2, 1513, Ponce de León disembarked on the northeast coast of what he named Florida for the crown. The exact location is disputed, but historians have offered the possibilities of St. Augustine, Ponce de León Inlet, and Melbourne Beach. He encountered the powerful Gulf Stream and found a passage through the Florida Keys to land on the southwestern Gulf Coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. Again, the exact location is disputed. While it is true that Columbus visited Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in 1493, Ponce de Leon was the first known European to reach the present-day United States mainland.
United States
In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (). The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq., to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in "The Virginia Gazette" newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.
Waldseemüller map
The inscription on the top left corner of the map proclaims that the discovery of America by Columbus and Vespucci fulfilled a prophecy of the Roman poet, Virgil, made in the Aeneid (VI. 795–797), of a land to be found in the southern hemisphere, to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn:
The Federal Union
The Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1877 (originally published as "The Federal Union: A History of the United States to 1865)" is history of the United States written by John D. Hicks, George E. Mowry and Robert E. Burke. First published in 1937, it covered the period from the discovery of the Americas in 1492 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Four revised editions followed that also covered the Reconstruction Era up to 1877, and accordingly were published with an updated subtitle. The fifth and final edition appeared in 1970.
Naming of the Americas
The naming of the Americas, or America occurred shortly after Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas in 1492. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years. However, some have suggested other explanations, including being named after a mountain range in Nicaragua, or after Richard Amerike of Bristol.
Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia
During her extensive research in the archives she discovered documents which convinced her that America might have been discovered a long time before Columbus by Arab-andalusian or Moroccan sailors trading with ports in Brazil, Guayana and Venezuela and she published her views in "No fuimos nosotros" ("It wasn't us") and "África versus América".
Middle Ages
In the early 15th century, the countries of the Iberian peninsula began to sponsor exploration beyond the boundaries of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (d. 1460) sent expeditions that discovered the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Cape Verde during his lifetime. After his death, exploration continued; Bartolomeu Dias (d. 1500) went around the Cape of Good Hope in 1486 and Vasco da Gama (d. 1524) sailed around Africa to India in 1498. The combined Spanish monarchies of Castile and Aragon sponsored the voyage of exploration by Christopher Columbus (d. 1506) in 1492 that discovered the Americas. The English crown under Henry VII sponsored the voyage of John Cabot (d. 1498) in 1497, which landed on Cape Breton Island.
Territories of the United States on stamps
Early French explorers include Antoine Cadillac, Jacques Marquette and Jean Nicolet.
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.
Timeline of United States discoveries
Timeline of United States discoveries encompasses the breakthroughs of human thought and knowledge of new scientific findings, phenomena, places, things, and what was previously unknown to exist. From a historical stand point, the timeline below of United States discoveries dates from the 18th century to the current 21st century, which have been achieved by discoverers who are either native-born or naturalized citizens of the United States.
Willis Van Devanter (art appraiser)
He also worked with Paul Mellon to buy and place the Vinland Map at Yale. The still controversial map, which was found in Spain, purportedly showed that the Norse had discovered America before Columbus.
Alfred Hudd
The traditional theory of the naming of America is that it was named in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator. At the turn of the sixteenth century, Vespucci undertook a series of voyages (the number of which remains unresolved) in search of a western passage to the Indies. After the voyage of 1501–1502, he proposed that the areas that he and, separately, Christopher Columbus had explored were not part of Asia, but rather a New World. America first received its name in the "Cosmographiae Introductio", published by cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507. Vespucci's published letters (the authenticity of which is contested) were the inspiration for that work, which was authored by a group of scholars in Saint-Dié, Lorraine, France. They revised Ptolemy's "Geography" to include the New World and reasoned that, as the three previously known continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, had feminine names, so should the New World. Accordingly, the feminised version of the Latin form of the baptismal name of the "discoverer" of the New World, Vespucci, was utilised. The appendix of the book included Waldseemüller's map of the world in which the New World was labelled "America." The map, rediscovered in a German castle in 1901, was the first to use the name America and the first to depict a Western Hemisphere. The Library of Congress purchased the 1507 Waldseemüller map in 2003. On 30 April 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel transferred the map, also known as America's "birth certificate," to the people of the United States in a ceremony at the Library of Congress.
Alexander von Humboldt
Simón Bolívar wrote that "The real discoverer of South America was Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors." Charles Darwin expressed his debt to Humboldt, and admiration for his work, writing to Joseph Dalton Hooker that Humboldt was the ""greatest scientific traveller who ever lived"". Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote that "Alexander is destined to combine ideas and follow chains of thoughts which would otherwise have remained unknown for ages. His depth, his sharp mind and his incredible speed are a rare combination." Johann Wolfgang Goethe observed that "Humboldt showers us with true treasures." Friedrich Schiller wrote that "Alexander impresses many, particularly when compared to his brother - because he shows off more!" José de la Luz y Caballero wrote that "Columbus gave Europe a New World; Humboldt made it known in its physical, material, intellectual, and moral aspects." Napoléon Bonaparte remarked "You have been studying Botanics? Just like my wife!" Claude Louis Berthollet said "This man is as knowledgeable as a whole academy." Thomas Jefferson remarked "I consider him the most important scientist whom I have met." Emil Du Bois-Reymond wrote that "Every scientist is a descendant of Humboldt. We are all his family." Robert G. Ingersoll wrote that "He was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama."
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus
This work is an ambitious homage to Dalí's Spain. It combines Spanish history, religion, art, and myth into a unified whole. It was commissioned for Huntington Hartford for the opening of his Museum Gallery of Modern Art in New York's 2 Columbus Circle. At this time, some Catalan historians were claiming that Columbus was actually from Catalonia, not Italy, making the discovery all the more relevant for Dalí, who was also from this region of Spain.
The Discovery of America by the Turks
The Discovery of America by the Turks (Portuguese: A Descoberta da América pelos Turcos) is a Brazilian Modernist novel. It was written by Jorge Amado in 1994 but not published in English until 2012. Amado tells how, in 1991, he was approached by an organization in Italy to write a story to celebrate the fifth centennial of the discovery of the American continent. This would be published in a book, together with stories by Norman Mailer and Carlos Fuentes, which would be handed out to passengers flying between Italy and Central, North and South America in 1992, the year of the fifth centennial. Amado submitted The Discovery of America by the Turks but the Italian book was never published, leaving Amado free to publish the 77-page story as a separate volume.
Italophilia
Italy was a center of commerce and Italian explorers and merchants, such as the Venetian Marco Polo, and the Italian maritime republics moved all around the known world. The Genoese explorer Cristoforo Colombo discovered America in 1492, changing world history forever. Another Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, was the source of the name given to the New World. They were followed by other New World navigators from the Italian peninsula, notably the Venetians Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) and Sebastiano Caboto (Sebastian Cabot), and the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano.
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu
The map's cartographer, Matteo Ricci, gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas. "In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica (using a name that early mapmakers gave to a supposed continent including Australia, Antarctica, and Tierra del Fuego), but a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them."
Christopher Columbus
Columbus always insisted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the lands that he visited during those voyages were part of the Asian continent, as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers. Columbus's refusal to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not after Columbus.
Maritime history
John Cabot was a Genoese navigator and explorer commonly credited as one of the first early modern Europeans to land on the North American mainland aboard the in 1497. Sebastian Cabot was an Italian explorer and may have sailed with his father John Cabot in May 1497. John Cabot and perhaps Sebastian, sailing from Bristol, took their small fleet along the coasts of a "New Found Land". There is much controversy over where exactly Cabot landed, but two likely locations that are often suggested are Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Cabot and his crew (including perhaps Sebastian) mistook this place for China, without finding the passage to the east they were looking for. Some scholars maintain that the name America comes from Richard Amerik, a Bristol merchant and customs officer, who is claimed on very slender evidence to have helped finance the Cabot voyages.
Dutch Ceylon
From the time that Christopher Columbus discovered America there was a significant Iberian challenge facing large parts of the world for Spain and Portugal in conquering the Americas and many other territories around the world. In the east, Portugal held territories not only in Ceylon but in India, in the Persian Gulf, and what is now Indonesia, then referred to as the East Indies.
Exploration of North America
In 1524, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed for King Francis I of France and is known as the first European since the Norse to explore the Atlantic coast of North America. Arriving near the Cape Fear River delta, he explored the coastlines of present-day states of South Carolina and North Carolina, entering the Pamlico Sound, and bypassing entrances to the Chesapeake Bay. Believing the New York Harbor to be a lake, he sailed past Long Island, exploring Narragansett Bay and Newfoundland.
Portuguese Americans
Some of the earliest European explorers to reach continental North America in the Age of Discovery were Portuguese explorers, such as João Fernandes Lavrador. Navigators, like the Miguel Corte-Real family, may have visited the North American shores at the beginning of the 16th century.
Christopher Columbus
Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile. On his first voyage, he independently discovered the Americas and magnetic declination. These voyages marked the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are thus of enormous significance in Western history.
Americas
The name America was first recorded in 1507. Christie's auction house says a two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term. The name was also used (together with the related term "Amerigen") in the "Cosmographiae Introductio", apparently written by Matthias Ringmann, in reference to South America. It was applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. America derives from "Americus", the Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's first name. The feminine form "America" accorded with the feminine names of Asia, Africa, and Europa.
The Discovery of America
The Discovery of America is a trilogy written by the German author and educator Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-1818). It was originally published in 1781/82 as "Die Entdekkung von Amerika - ein angenehmes und nützliches Lesebuch für Kinder und junge Leute" and deals with the discovery, early exploration and conquest of America by focusing on one explorer in each volume: Christopher Columbus is treated first, followed by Hernán Cortés and finally Francisco Pizarro. The work is counted among the first books of specific children's literature, directly targeting children and adolescents as its main audience, and Campe said to have "set the standard for German children's literature." The trilogy is defined by its author's involvement in the German educational movement of philanthropinism and has been a great success, also being translated into several languages.
Hispanic and Latino Americans
In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the present United States. That same year Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians across today's Arizona–Mexico border and traveled as far as central Kansas, close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. Other Spanish explorers of the US territory include, among others: Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, Pánfilo de Narváez, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Gaspar de Portolà, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Tristán de Luna y Arellano and Juan de Oñate, and non-Spanish explorers working for the Spanish Crown, such as Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. In all, Spaniards probed half of today's lower 48 states before the first English colonization effort in 1585 at Roanoke Island off the East Coast.
Theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas
It is possible that Mesopotamian ships could have gotten lost and sailed to the Americas, and left artifacts near the coast which could be tested for their veracity. Positive evidence would suggest eastern explorers discovered the Americas long before the Norse exploration of Newfoundland c. 1000 CE.
In the late 18th century, a number of people speculated on the origins of the petroglyphs on Dighton Rock in Berkley, Massachusetts. Ezra Stiles, then President of Yale College, believed them to be Hebrew. Antoine Court de Gébelin argued in "Le Monde primitif" ("The primeval World") that they commemorated an ancient visit to the East Coast by a group of sailors from Carthage (modern-day Tunisia).
Jeffrey Goodman
Goodman claims that the fossils in North America are "twice as old as the oldest fully modern skull from europe". In his work he attempted to show that the American Indians were not only the first Americans but were the first humans on earth. Goodman allows that hominids did appear in Asia and Africa, though homo sapiens are completely American in origin according to his theory. Goodman's theory has been criticised as his explanation of the relationship between hominids and humans was vaguely discussed. However Goodman in a later book addressed the issue in "The Genesis Mystery: the Sudden Appearance of Man" (1983) in which he criticised natural selection and advocated a type of spiritual evolution by claiming that archaeological findings verify an unbridgeable gap between modern man and the last "pre-man" creature and advocates spiritual intervention as the explanation for the "sudden appearance" of modern man. According to Michael Anthony Corey: Goodman "appeals to an intervening supernatural force, which would have manifested itself entirely through a "natural" series of evolutionary processes".
History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
Juan Ponce de León, a Spanish conquistador, named Florida in honor of his discovery of the land on April 2, 1513, during Pascua Florida, a Spanish term for the Easter season. From that date forward, the land became known as "La Florida." (Juan Ponce de León may not have been the first European to reach Florida. At least one native that he encountered in Florida in 1513 could speak Spanish. Alternatively, the Spanish-speaking native could have been in contact with areas where Spanish settlements already existed, and Ponce de León was indeed the discoverer).
Saga of Erik the Red
Eiríks saga rauða () or the Saga of Erik the Red is a saga, thought to have been composed before 1265, on the Norse exploration of North-America.
Despite the name, the saga mainly chronicles the life and expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni and his wife Gudrid, characters also seen in the Greenland saga. The saga also details the events that led to Erik the Red's banishment to Greenland and Leif Ericson's preaching of Christianity as well as his discovery of Vinland after his longship was blown off course. By geographical details, this place is thought to be present-day Newfoundland, and was probably the first European discovery of the American mainland, some five centuries before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Antilles.
Exploration of North America
Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to venture into the newly acquired territory of the Louisiana Purchase, at the order of President Thomas Jefferson. They discovered many new geographical features, Indian tribes, and animal and plant species. John Colter was a member of the expedition who subsequently became a guide for others in the 'Old West,' and did some explorations of his own.
Exploration of North America
The Viking voyages did not become common knowledge in the Old World, and Europeans remained unaware of the existence of the Americas as a whole, until the first decades following the year 1492. Many expeditions were launched from European nations in search of a Northwest Passage to East Asia (or "the Indies" as the region was called) in order to establish a shorter trade route to China than the Silk Road, a trade route which had become desperately needed and yet exacerbated by the Fall of Constantinople. Also, the Castilian crown needed an alternative to the Portuguese controlled eastern maritime trade route around Africa to India and East Asia.
On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from the Port of Palos de la Frontera in the Province of Huelva, from the newly "los Reyes Católicos" coordinated Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, in present-day Spain, financed by Queen Isabella I of Castille. Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage of his discovery of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola spread the news across Europe quickly. Columbus rediscovered and explored much of the Lesser Antilles in his second voyage then discovered both Trinidad and Tobago on his third voyage whilst skirting the northern South American coast. His fourth voyage was spent scanning the Central American coast. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus opened the New World.
List of continent name etymologies
An alternative theory was proposed by the local Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd who proposed that the word America had evolved from Amerike or ap Meryk, based on a lost manuscript which he claimed to have seen. Alfred Hudd was an aristocrat who belonged to the Clifton Antiquarian Club of Bristol, founded in 1884 to arrange meetings and excursions for the study of objects of archaeological interest in the West of England and South Wales. He also collected butterflies, was a naturalist and member of the Bristol Naturalists' Society. Hudd proposed that the word "America" was originally applied to a destination across the western ocean, possibly an island or a fishing station in Newfoundland. After the king of Denmark and ruler of Iceland had cut off trade for fish, England sent out expeditions to find new sources. Hudd suggested Amerike's sponsorship made his name known in Bristol in association with the North American destinations prior to other mapmaking or voyages. The writer Jonathan Cohen noted he made a conjectural leap to reach that conclusion, and no extant evidence supports it. In the 21st century, the scholar John Davies briefly mentioned the story as a kind of Welsh patriot piece.
Exploration of North America
It was soon understood that Columbus had not reached Asia, but rather found what was to Europeans a New World, which in 1507 was named "America", probably after Amerigo Vespucci, on the Waldseemüller map.
Maritime history
Christopher Columbus was a navigator and maritime explorer who is one of several historical figures credited as the discoverer of the Americas. It is generally believed that he was born in Genoa, although other theories and possibilities exist. Columbus' voyages across the Atlantic Ocean began a European effort at exploration and colonization of the Western Hemisphere. While history places great significance on his first voyage of 1492, he did not actually reach the mainland until his third voyage in 1498. Likewise, he was not the earliest European explorer to reach the Americas, as there are accounts of European transatlantic contact prior to 1492. Nevertheless, Columbus's voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. Therefore, the period before 1492 is known as Pre-Columbian.
Historical revisionism
In recounting the European colonization of the Americas, some history books of the past paid little attention to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, usually mentioning them only in passing and making no attempt to understand the events from their point of view. This was reflected in the description of Christopher Columbus having discovered America. The portrayal of these events has since been revised, avoiding the word "discovery."
Founding Fathers of the United States
The First Continental Congress met briefly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1774, consisting of fifty-six delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies (not including Georgia) that became the United States of America. Among them was George Washington, who would soon be drawn out of military retirement to command the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Also in attendance was Patrick Henry, and John Adams, who like all delegates were elected by their respective colonial assemblies. Other delegates included Samuel Adams from Massachusetts, John Dickinson from Pennsylvania and New York's John Jay. This congress in addition to formulating appeals to the British crown, established the Continental Association to administer boycott actions against Britain.
Theory of Phoenician discovery of the Americas
In 1996, McMenamin proposed a controversial theory that Phoenician sailors discovered the New World c. 350 BC. The Phoenician state of Carthage minted gold staters in 350 BC bearing a pattern in the reverse exergue of the coins, which McMenamin interpreted as a map of the Mediterranean with the Americas shown to the west across the Atlantic. McMenamin later demonstrated that putative Carthaginian coins found in America were modern forgeries.
Leif Erikson
According to a literal interpretation of Einar Haugen's translation of the two sagas in the book "Voyages to Vinland", Leif was not the first European to discover America: he had heard the story of merchant Bjarni Herjólfsson who claimed to have sighted land to the west of Greenland after having been blown off course. Bjarni reportedly never made landfall there, however. Later, when travelling from Norway to Greenland, Leif was also blown off course, to a land that he did not expect to see, where he found "self-sown wheat fields and grapevines". He next rescued two men who were shipwrecked in this country and went back to Greenland (and Christianised the people there). Consequently, if this is to be trusted, Bjarni Herjólfsson was the first European to see America beyond Greenland, and the two unnamed shipwrecked men were the first people known to Europeans to have made landfall there.
Joseph Fischer (cartographer)
Joseph Fischer, S.J. (; 19 March 1858 – 26 October 1944) was a German clergyman and cartographer. Fischer had an eminently successful career as a cartographer, publishing old maps. In 1901, while he was investigating the Vikings' discovery of America, he accidentally discovered the long-lost map of Martin Waldseemüller, dated 1507. This map, which claims to update Ptolemy with the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, is the first known to display the word "America". The map was purchased from its owner by the United States Library of Congress in 2001 for ten million dollars.
History of the Americas
The prehistory of the Americas (North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean) begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia during the height of an Ice Age. These groups are generally believed to have been isolated from peoples of the "Old World" until the coming of Europeans in the 10th century from Iceland led by Leif Erikson  and with the voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Daniel Aaron
Daniel Aaron (August 4, 1912 – April 30, 2016) was an American writer and academic who helped found the Library of America.
Sebastian Cabot (explorer)
According to "Cartografía Marítima Hispana", Sebastian Cabot included a handwritten text in Latin on his famous map of North America (published in Antwerp, 1544) claiming to have discovered North America with his father in 1494, three years before his father's voyage. Sancho Gutierrez repeated this text in Castilian on his 1551 map. 
Placed next to the border of North America, the text reads:
This land was discovered by Johannes Caboto, venetian and Sebastian Caboto, his son, in the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ MCCCCXCIV, 24th of June in the morning. They put to it the name 'prima terra vista' and [...] This big island was named Saint John, as it was discovered on Saint John holiday. People there wander wearing animal furs. They use bow and arrow to fight, javelins and darts and wooden batons and slings. This is a very sterile land, there are a lot of white bears and very big deers, big as horses, and many other animals. As well there are infinite fish: plaices, salmons, very long soles, 1 yard long and many other varieties of fish. Most of them are called cod. And there are also black hawks, black as ravens, eagles, partridges and many other birds.
Naming of the Americas
Vespucci was apparently unaware of the use of his name to refer to the new landmass, as Waldseemüller's maps did not reach Spain until a few years after his death. Ringmann may have been misled into crediting Vespucci by the widely published Soderini Letter, a sensationalized version of one of Vespucci's actual letters reporting on the mapping of the South American coast, which glamorized his discoveries and implied that he had recognized that South America was a continent separate from Asia; in fact, it is not known what Vespucci believed on this count, and he may have died believing, like Columbus, that he had reached the East Indies in Asia rather than a new continent. Spain officially refused to accept the name "America" for two centuries, saying that Columbus should get credit, and Waldseemüller's later maps, after Ringmann's death, did not include it; however, usage was established when Gerardus Mercator applied the name to the entire New World in his 1538 world map. Acceptance may have been aided by the "natural poetic counterpart" that the name "America" made with "Asia, Africa," and "Europa".
Martín Alonso Pinzón
These and other acts by Pinzón and by his brothers, especially Vicente, have led historians to see the brothers as "co-discoverers of America", in that without their help, support, and courage, Columbus probably could not have achieved his enterprise of discovery, at least not in that time and place. At one point during the "pleitos colombinos", a royal prosecutor argued that Pinzón had played a more important role in the discovery of the Indies the Columbus himself.
Vinland
Vinland, Vineland or Winland () is the area of coastal North America explored by Norse Vikings, where Leif Erikson first landed in ca. 1000, approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. "Vinland" was the name given to North America as far as it was explored by the Norse, presumably including both Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence as far as northeastern New Brunswick (where the eponymous grapevines are found).
America 500 Years
America 500 Years is the title of a series of paintings created in 1988–91 by Nabil Kanso in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. The works in the series base their subjects on historical events in the Americas over the course of five centuries.
Pseudohistory
Most theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas, and other reputable scholarship, have been classified as pseudohistory, including claims that the Americas were actually discovered by Arabs or Muslims. Gavin Menzies's book "", which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America, has also been categorized as a work of pseudohistory.
Globus Jagellonicus
Robert J. King has pointed out that America was shown on the Jagiellonian Globe in two locations: in the Atlantic Ocean under the names and ; and in the Indian Ocean under the name (America newly discovered). The phrase, "america noviter reperta" was used for the first time in the booklet, "Globus Mundi: Declaratio sive descriptio mundi et totius orbis terrarum," published in Strassburg by J. Grüninger in 1509.
American (word)
The name "America" was coined by Martin Waldseemüller from "Americus Vespucius", the Latinized version of the name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), the Italian explorer who mapped South America's east coast and the Caribbean Sea in the early 16th century. Later, Vespucci's published letters were the basis of Waldseemüller's 1507 map, which is the first usage of "America". The adjective "American" subsequently denoted the New World.
History of the Southern United States
Hernando de Soto, a Spanish explorer and "conquistador" led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day southern United States searching for gold, and a passage to China. De Sotos group were the first documented Europeans to cross the Mississippi River, on whose banks de Soto died in 1542. (Alonso Álvarez de Pineda was the first European to see the river, in 1519 when he sailed twenty miles up the river from the Gulf of Mexico).
Columbus on Trial
"Columbus on Trial" contains a variety of characters, all an important part of the message that the film conveys to its audience. The protagonist of this film is Christopher Columbus, who with the help of his Chicano defense lawyer tries to prove his innocence. The lawyer in charge of prosecuting Christopher Columbus is a Native man who stresses the importance of convicting Columbus, referred to as “The Great Assassin". The judge and defense lawyer are Chicanos loyal to their Spanish roots and believe Columbus was the discoverer of the Americas. The prosecutor, on the other hand, is of Indian origins and wants Christopher Columbus to be convicted. Christopher Columbus, for many, was the explorer who discovered the Americas. For others, he was a murderer and a trespasser. This video is a parody of a present-day trial in a courtroom. In this make-believe trial, we see various aspects of coloniality of power, hegemony, and colonial modern gender system.
Richard Amerike
Richard ap Meryk, anglicised to Richard Amerike (or Ameryk) ( 1440–1503) was an Anglo-Welsh merchant, royal customs officer and, at the end of his life, sheriff of Bristol. Several claims have been made for Amerike by popular writers of the late twentieth century. One was that he was the major funder of the voyage of exploration launched from Bristol by the Venetian John Cabot in 1497, and that Amerike was the owner of Cabot's ship, the "Matthew". The other claim revived a theory first proposed in 1908 by a Bristolian scholar and amateur historian, Alfred Hudd. Hudd's theory, greatly elaborated by later writers, suggested that the continental name America was derived from Amerike's surname in gratitude for his sponsorship of Cabot's successful discovery expedition to the 'New World'. However, neither claim is backed up by hard evidence, and the consensus view is that America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer.
John Cabot
Information about the 1497 voyage comes mostly from four short letters and an entry in a 1565 chronicle of the city of Bristol. The chronicle entry for 1496/7 says in full:
"This year, on St. John the Baptist's Day [24 June 1497], the land of America was found by the Merchants of Bristow in a shippe of Bristowe, called the Mathew; the which said the ship departed from the port of Bristowe, the second day of May, and came home again the 6th of August next following." –
G.E. Weare, "Cabot's Discovery of North America," (London, 1897), p. 116
Michael Musmanno
He was very proud of his Italian heritage. Among the books he wrote was one arguing that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover the New World. This was in reaction to scholarly research showing that the Vikings had reached the northeast coast of North America before Columbus' time.
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the name of a painting by artist Salvador Dalí, begun in 1958 and finished in 1959. It is over 14 feet tall and over 9 feet wide (410 x 284 cm; 161.4 x 111.8 in), one in a series of large paintings Dalí did during this era.
Hans Pothorst
Hans Pothorst ( 1440 – 1490) was a privateer, likely from the German city Hildesheim. He is mostly notable because some have proposed that he may have discovered America along with Didrik Pining (among others) in the 1470s, almost twenty years before Columbus.
Alexander von Humboldt
Leaving from Cuba, Humboldt decided to take an unplanned short visit to the United States. Knowing that the current U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, was himself a scientist, Humboldt wrote to him saying that he would be in the United States. Jefferson warmly replied, inviting him to visit the White House in the nation's new capital. In his letter Humboldt had gained Jefferson's interest by mentioning that he had discovered mammoth teeth near the Equator. Jefferson had previously written that he believed mammoths had never lived so far south. Humboldt had also hinted at his knowledge of New Spain.
Naming of the Americas
The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to April 25, 1507, where it was applied to what is now known as South America. It appears on a small globe map with twelve time zones, together with the largest wall map made to date, both created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France. These were the first maps to show the Americas as a land mass separate from Asia. An accompanying book, "Cosmographiae Introductio", anonymous but apparently written by Waldseemüller's collaborator Matthias Ringmann, states, "I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part [that is, the South American mainland], after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerigen, that is, the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women".
John Dee
Dee posited a formal claim to North America on the back of a map drawn in 1577–80; he noted "Circa 1494 Mr Robert Thorn his father, and Mr Eliot of Bristow, discovered Newfound Land." In his "Title Royal" of 1580, he invented the claim that Madog ab Owain Gwynedd had discovered America, with the intention of ensuring that England's claim to the New World was stronger than that of Spain. He further asserted that Brutus of Britain and King Arthur as well as Madog had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England had a priority claim there.
Matthias Ringmann
Around 1503, Ringmann visited Italy. There, he learned about the newly discovered western lands and the explorations that took place within them. These lands were initially known as the New World, and were later named "the Americas". He also came to believe that Amerigo Vespucci had discovered South America.
Territories of the United States on stamps
Christopher Columbus was honored in the first U.S. commemorative stamps in the Columbian Exposition issue of 1893. On his return to Spain, Columbus reported his discoveries to the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who made the Americas widely known in Europe.
Maritime history of England
Before Christopher Columbus reached mainland America, John Cabot was employed by the English government to discover new lands. He first sailed from Bristol in the "Matthew" in 1497. It is not clear where the small fleet went but two likely locations are Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. They did not find the passage to China for which they were looking. A second voyage was made in 1498 but 4 of the 5 ships vanished. Some scholars maintain that the name "America" comes from Richard Amerike, a Bristol merchant and customs officer, who is claimed (on very slender evidence) to have helped finance the Cabots' voyages.