Amerigo Vespucci
There is one a little bit unfair fact about naming - usually when something new is discovered, it is named after the discoverer. In the case of the new continents, in didn't happen like that. The Florentine sailor Amerigo Vespucci lived and worked after Columbus, but precisely he was the one to give the name of America. His personality is surrounded by uncertain facts - some say he made 2 voyages to the New World, some say - 4 (lately scientist seem to agree on the compromise number three); some think he was extremely talented and knowledgeable explore, others - that he was just a meat merchant with luck. Actually the only irrefutable information we have about his life comes from his letters to friends Lorenzo Medici and Pietro Soderini. The letters were published in a few years and they were the first source of information about the new continent - Europeans learnt a lot from these detailed letters about the life, the people, the nature. It is very helpful and interesting if even now, with everything discovered and described, sailors put down diaries and accounts on what is happening to them, what they see, what they transformations they pass through as people. Writing a letter is a simple way to do that.
The other very important thing he left was the maps - he was a skilful cartographer.
Amerigo also travelled to South America (what is now Venezuela) and left remarkable accounts.
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