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Amerigo Vespucci was born on March 9, 1451 and died on February 22, 1512 (Wikipedia.com). He was born in Florence Italy, but worked and lived in Seville, Spain.
 * Amerigo Vespucci **

His navigation career really started in 1508 when King Ferdinand gave him the title of chief navigator of Spain. The king also asked Vespucci to begin a navigation school out of his home in order to standardize navigation tools and techniques. Vespucci, while teaching at his school, also developed a way to calculate longitude (Wikipedia.com). Many aspiring navigators and cartographers including, Ferdinand Magellan, attended his school.

After one of his voyages to the Americas, Vespucci declared that they (the Americas) were not a part of Asia, rather two previously unknown continents. It is because Vespucci discovered these two new continents that they came to be known as the Americas. America is the feminized form of Vespucci’s first name, Amerigo.