Amerigo Vespucci
Vespucci was the one person for whom
North and South America was named after. Vespucci had a
wonderful life and found many things on his voyages.
Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy in March of
1451, and grew up in a considerable mansion near the river.
As a young boy, Amerigo's happiest moments studying the
stars. He excelled in mathematics and his hobby was
copying maps. His dream as a young boy was to travel and
get a better picture about what the Earth looked like.
Amerigo spent half of his life as a business man hoping to
strike it rich so he could explore. Amerigo was the third son,
there were two older brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, the
youngest was Bernardo. The parents were Stagio and
Elisabetta Vespucci. Italy, at this time was not yet a civilized
country. Italy was a bunch of city- states each self governed
and looking for money for it's own purposes and not for the
benefit of the country. Florence, where Amerigo was born
and grew up, was in the city-state governed by the powerful
Medici family. Later in Vespucci's life he ends up working
for this family helping govern the city-state. Italy, at this time
was not a good country as it is today. In 1492 Vespucci left
Florence for Seville, Spain because Italy had the monopoly
and didn't need, or want, exploration. Well into his forties,
around 1495, Vespucci became the director of a ship
company that supplied ships for long voyages. This was the
first opportunity Vespucci had to make voyages and he was
very happy about this, therefore he was only looking for
"new worlds" to discover and not money or rewards for
finding exotic places. In 1497 Vespucci said that he went on
a voyage to the "New World." Little is known about this
because there was not much evidence to support that he
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