Word: amerigo
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...Amerigo Vespucci first sighted the coast of Brazil late in June 1499. Vegetation grew so thickly at the water's edge that his ships could not land. The air was scented with flowers, gums, resins, wet wood, rotting leaves, redolent barks and fruits. Because it smelled good (and with a playful passing bow to Saint Ambrose), Amerigo Vespucci named the land "Ambrosia," and sailed southward to find the passage to India...
...AMERIGO VESPUCCI, PILOT MAJOR-Frederick J. Pohl-Columbia University Press...
...world knows, Vespucci's christening did not stick. A Viennese writer sensationally garbled his dry, precise accounts of his discoveries, making boasts and claims that Vespucci himself never made. They were widely read, and in 1507 a German cartographer applied Amerigo's name to the whole New World...
...centuries Vespucci has been considered the undeserving recipient of an honor which rightfully belonged to Columbus. Emerson called Vespucci a thief. Now Biographer Pohl rises to point out that Amerigo Vespucci was actually a man of whom Americans can be proud: one of the greatest in an age of great seamen...
...Amerigo Vespucci calculated the circumference of the earth at the equator at 24,852 miles. Modern science has found it to be 24,902. (Columbus' estimate was 6,125 miles short.) On his voyages Amerigo remained awake, night after sleepless night, to study the stars and try to reason out what changes the New World's discovery forced in the science of navigation. "In the endeavor to ascertain longitude I have lost much sleep," said Amerigo, "and have shortened my life ten years, but I hold it well worth the cost. . . ." Columbus, the intuitive, estimated the speed...