Nicolas Hiatt Mrs. Goode Marine Science period 3 25-August-2011 Amerigo Vespucci Amerigo Vespucci was born in Italy on March 9th 1454, in a mansion near a river. in Amerigo's younger age, his dream as a young boy was to travel and get an overall better idea of how the Earth looked. Amerigo spent half of his life as a business man hoping to become rich to be able to explore and the other half pursuing his career as an actual explorer. Amerigo was the third son out of four, there were two older brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, and one younger, Bernardo. Amerigo's parents were Stagio and Elisabetta Vespucci. In 1492 Amerigo left Italy for Spain because Italy didn't need, or want, exploration. When Amerigo reached his forties, around 1495, he became the captain of a ship company that supplied ships for Columbus for long voyages. This was Amerigo’s first opportunity to make voyages and he was ecstatic about this, therefore he was only looking for "new worlds" to discover without a cash reward, just for the adventure of it. Amerigo made numerous amounts of discoveries and one of the most important of them all was that he was the first to realize the Americas were not part of Asia. it is often mistook that Amerigo was actually the first to find America but that is not true, that would be Columbus, but he thought that it was part of Asia which Amerigo promptly disproved. The Americas actually took it’s name from Amerigo. Another important venture Amerigo is known for was being the first man to sail through the amazon river, and to Brazil. The last main thing he did was that he actually mapped out the world and calculated the size of it and was only off by 50 miles.
Works Cited
"Amerigo Vespucci." CatholiCity - The Catholic Church Simplified. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. . "Amerigo Vespucci." ELIZABETHAN ERA. 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. . "Amerigo Vespucci." Mrs. Guffin's Home Page. 25 Aug. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. .