Death of Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci died on 22 February 1512 in Seville, aged 57. A Florentine merchant, navigator and cartographer, Vespucci took part in voyages along the coast of South America around the turn of the sixteenth century. Letters attributed to him argued that the lands reached by Columbus were not part of Asia but a separate continent, a New World. The German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller used a feminine form of his first name, America, on a famous 1507 map, and the name eventually spread to both continents. Historians still debate the authenticity of some of the letters and how many voyages he actually made. He later served as pilot major of Spain.

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