What's that, you say? April 25?
Well, in a way. It's not the beginning of the United States, which is, as I think some of us forget, NOT all there is to America. Nor is it the discovery of America by Europeans -- whether you want to give that nod to Vikings or whomever. Nor is it the migration of humans across what is now the Bering Strait into North America.
But it is the beginning of the term.
The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, where it was applied to what is now known as South America. It appears on a small globe map with twelve time zones, together with the largest wall map made to date (above), both created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in France.
So a German, working in France, named America for an Italian.
Apparently he was a bit of a scoundrel.
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