Wish I could offer you cash and prizes, but you get my humble gratitude and that of your fellow Gather members.
HISTORY BUFFS may not even get this one!!
Hint: it's really not Columbus, although he did get credit for it! Also, it has "America" in it/is derived from it.
This is a tidbit I learned in middle school from a "politically incorrect" teacher.
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Named with "America in mind..."
But there is evidence of Viking landing and possibly celtic, along with the obvious natives, before him
If you know who specifically was before HIM, please comment! I like that kind of stuff!
;) Who else did you guys think it was...
Please continue, I liked your guesses...
searching south through Canada and to what is now the United States.
The theory is that the original settlers of the Americas came across the land bridge of the Bering Strait.
http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/vespucci.html
http://www.mnc.net/norway/ericson.htm
Here's a an answer you might not hear fromanybody else. Bjarni Herjulfson. Bjarni was a Viking merchant sailing to Greenland. He got blown of course for days by a huge storm. When it was over, Bjarni spotted land. He didn't know it, but he was looking at Newfoundland.
If Bjarni had an exploring spirit, it could have been a defiing moment hinhistory. But Bjarni was intent on going home, not going down in history, so he turned around and sailed back to Greenland. A few years later he told his tale tohis buddy Lief Ericsson, who bought Bjarni's ship and headed out to find this strange land. The rest you know.
Of course there are others who will tell you that an Irish Monk, a Welsh aord, A Scottish knight, A Chinese eunich, or a Phoenician sea captain was first. It is an endlessly interesting discussion.
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O late i knew it was Vespucci
The Asian peoples who crossed the Bering Straight ten or twenty thousand years ago to become the ancestor of modern day north and south American aboriginals certainly discovered America.
The Celts, who left their distinctive crosses in the New England woods, are likely early "discoverers" of America.
The Vikings, who we know came to northern north America in, what, tenth or twefth century were "discoverers" of America.
Polynesians who crossed the Pacific in rafts of the kind Thor Heyerdahl tested and proved worthy of the journey may have discovered the western coast of south America.
The Egyptians, it is even speculated, may have made trans-Atlantic journeys and inspired the building of ziggurat pyramids on south America.
Who knows how many forgotten peoples stumbled across our neck of the woods?