Chris Columbus Gets His Day, but...

...Amerigo Vespucci gets two continents named after him. How is that fair?

Debate, if you will, whether or not Christopher Columbus even deserves a day - let alone a full day off - from school and mail. Mine is not to debate that he was an a) idiot who couldn't understand basic geometric mathematics, "India's right up ahead!" b) an asshole who killed and made destitute the innocent natives he encountered c) opened up half of the planet to raping and pillaging that continues, unabated to present day. d) yes, all these and many more.

I will give him credit for trying to find a way around the Medici Monopoly of all the waterways of Europe and the all important Mediterranean salt trade routes. This is, afterall, the reason Christopher was able to get any cash from Queen Isabella of Spain. It wasn't his winning personality, it was his idea that he may have found a way for Spain to not have to be forced to deal with the Medichi's.

Anyhow, Chris finds Cuba - or something. Wrecks a boat on his way out. Enslaves some natives, and kills them or makes them homeless - and introduces European diseases that wipes out 50K or so people. Not a bad trip for a white Catholic European. White guys have been trying to emulate that weekend for about 400 years since. ....and luckily for the moon men, Armstrong was wearing a helmet.

But the wonder of the day, a single day, devoted to the 'celebration' of the carnage that Columbus invited to the other half of the planet is this -- how come he gets just a day, and an Italian map maker gets to name the two continents after himself? Oh, sure, Chris got a Space Shuttle named after him - but two continents? For a map maker?

Amerigo Vespucci had already been on a trip to the Brazilian shoulder, but he was not in command of that expedition, but was a person best qualified to go as an observer. Vespucci did not command at the start - the Portuguese captain was probably Gonçalo Coelho - but ultimately took charge at the request of the Portuguese officers. Vespucci, in all probability, voyaged to America, but since he did not have command and as yet had no practical experience piloting a ship... one again wonders why he gets all the credit? On the first of these voyages he was aboard the ship that discovered that South America extended much further south than previously thought. Way to go. It's big. It's not India.

The expeditions became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to Vespucci were published between 1502 and 1504. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the new continent America after Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. In an accompanying book, Waldseemüller published one of the Vespucci accounts, which led to criticism that Vespucci was trying to upset Christopher Columbus' glory. However, the rediscovery in the 18th century of other letters by Vespucci, primarily in the Soderini Letter, has led to the view that the early published accounts could be fabrications, not by Vespucci, but by others. source

Because Amerigo was a map maker, and gave a rip about all this new land to conquer - and realized it was 'new' -- which means 'new to white people', not the non-Christian folks who were standing on it- means he gets everything in the new world named after him.... and he had better branding, and, the Medici's hated Columbus for ruining their monopoly. Cristobol Colombo, after all, still thought he'd been to India, and didn't exploit his findings nearly as well.

So, shouldn't it be Amerigo? And isn't that way cooler than naming two continents after a typo?