The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: March ninth, saying "Happy Birthday, Amerigo."

A navigator born this day in 1451 in the Italian city-state of Florence certainly left his mark on the world. As a young man, he studied navigation, eventually earning his living as a merchant and out-fitter of ships. In his late 30's, he met a visionary sailor from Genoa who was born the same year as he was. Despite the then common knowledge that the earth was flat, these believers thought they could reach the riches of the Orient by sailing west into the unknown.

Several years later, the sailor from Genoa, one Cristoforo Colombo, wrangled the first chance to provide proof of the earth's roundness. Sailing west from the Canary Islands, he discovered, not India as he supposed, but Mundus Novus, a new world.

The Florentine seaman, Amerigo Vespucci, also captained four voyages to this new world and, among other discoveries, was first to find and explore the Amazon River.

History has credited Christopher Columbus with discovery of the new world, but back in 1507, when a German geographer, Martin Waldseemuller, published one of the first maps showing these new lands, the situation wasn't as clear. "Since Europe and Asia were both named after women," he wrote, "no one should object to my calling this new land Amerige, the land of Amerigo, after its discoverer, a gentleman of great ability."

The name America stuck, and so this obscure German scholar became godfather of the Western Hemisphere, naming the new world after the man whose 550th birthday we commemorate today.