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So the USA is not América!

We are celebrating America’s 250th birthday this summer, but did you know it has been more than twice that long since the very first document on which the name "America" appears was published? The Library has the only surviving copy of the 1507 Waldseemüller map.

The map grew out of an ambitious project in St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France, during the first decade of the 16th century, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the discoveries of the late 15th and the first years of the 16th centuries.

Waldseemüller’s large world map was the most exciting product of that research effort, and included data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages of 1501–1502 to the New World. Waldseemüller christened the new lands "America" in recognition of Vespucci ’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century.

Waldseemüller’s map supported Vespucci’s revolutionary concept by portraying the New World as a separate continent, which until then was unknown to the Europeans. It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge, recognizing the newly found American landmass and forever changing the European understanding of a world divided into only three parts—Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Click here to explore more of the map!: https://www.loc.gov/item/2003626426/?loclr=fbloc

Image: Detail of Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map shows label "America" on a landmass. It is placed roughly were Argentina is located on modern maps. Other details on the map include an illustration of a ship, a bird and other place names along the coast of the pictured landmass.