Free Republic

History 500-year-old global map found in Munich Munich librarians have found a rare 16th century world map that first gave America its name as a continent. The version by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller survived World War II sandwiched between geometry books. The Munich version is smaller than the 500-year-old global map found in a German monastery in 1901 and handed over by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007 to the US Library of Congress. Only four smaller versions were previously known to have survived. The word "America" on the larger Library of Congress map Waldseemüller (1470 – 1522) was...

The Oldest Map With The Word 'America' On It Was Just Found Between Two Geometry Books The Daily Telegraph Jul. 3, 2012, 7:44 PM A version of a 500-year-old world map that was the first to mention the name "America" has been discovered in a German university library. Experts did not even know about the existence of a fifth copy of the map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller until it showed up a few days ago, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich said. The discovery is much smaller and thought to have been made after the 1507 original version, which Germany...

Ptolemy's Geography, America and Columbus: Ancient Greeks and why maybe America was discovered Michael Lahanas Aristotle: “there is a continuity between the parts about the pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one.” [As] for the rest of the distance around the inhabited earth which has not been visited by us up to the present time (because of the fact that the navigators who sailed in opposite directions never met), it is not of very great extent, if we reckon from the parallel distances that have been traversed by us... For...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday officially handed over to the United States the 500-year-old map that was the first to tell the world of a new land it called America. Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German-born cleric and cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America — named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci — the first to depict the Western Hemisphere and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4763661.html

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reoriented Germany away from Russia and toward the United States. Expanded economic ties are just one area of renewed cooperation. But could Germany get burned like the British did? The gift brought by a guest says a lot about his or her intentions. The love-sick romantic shows up with a dozen red roses. A box of Cohiba cigars is the classic gift between men in the West. Purebred horses and trained falcons, on the other hand, are the gift of choice among men in the Arab world. When German chancellors travel, their hosts usually receive...

A "groundbreaking" 16th century map credited with giving America its name has gone on display at Christie's.The map, the oldest printed map of the New World, is one of only four surviving examples and is expected to raise up to £800,000 at auction.As well as using the word America for the first time, after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who argued that the land discovered by Columbus in 1492 was a new continent, the map is also the first printed portrayal of the Earth as a globe.It was discovered by chance two years ago when a newspaper picture caught...

Article Published July 24, 2003 America put on the map First document to name country makes its debut Story by Associated Press WASHINGTON — The earliest map using "America" to label part of the New World is going on display in America for the first time. The 496-year-old Martin Waldseemueller map, sometimes called America's birth certificate, will be on public view at the Library of Congress starting today. The library recently completed the $10 million purchase of the 12-panel map covering 36 square feet, the most expensive single item it has ever acquired. It was owned by Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg,...

A New Theory on Mapping the New World By Guy Gugliotta Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 7, 2002; Page A07 In 1507, a group of scholars working in France produced an extraordinary map of the world, the first to put the still-recent discoveries of Columbus and others into a new continent separate from Asia, and to call that continent "America." With the Waldseemuller map, the New World was born. But there was something else. What would later come to be called South America and Central America were surprisingly well-shaped, not only on the east coast, where explorers had already...

The first time America was called America. (All Images from The Library of Congress)The Universalis Cosmographia, a 1507 cartographic exploration of the known world, depicted the New World as two entirely separate continents. This was quite a revolutionary stance on the early days of the Age of Discovery: many people still believed that the New World was connected to Asia. Although we now know that North and South America are a single continent, this ambitious map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller is rightfully revered for giving America its name.The wide wall map was originally printed in a gorgeous tome of cartographic illustrations and gores (maps designed to...

Drawn half a millennium ago and then swiftly forgotten, one map made us see the world as we know it today... and helped name America. But, as Toby Lester has discovered, the most powerful nation on earth also owes its name to a pun. Almost exactly 500 years ago, in 1507, Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure Germanic scholars based in the mountains of eastern France, made one of the boldest leaps in the history of geographical thought - and indeed in the larger history of ideas. Near the end of an otherwise plodding treatise titled Introduction to Cosmography,...

"The Carta marina is Waldseemüller’s most original creation," Van Duzer said. "He began his cartographic career by redrawing Ptolemy, but ended it by creating something entirely new, a mosaic image of the world with each stone of his own careful choosing."

How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents? That is one of the bigger mysteries in the history of the Renaissance. But it is not the only one involving Martin Waldseemueller, a map-making cleric whose own story is sufficiently obscure that his birth and death dates aren't known for certain. Waldseemueller appears to have also known something about the contours of South America's west coast years before Vasco...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers. Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?... ... Although the map conceals many mysteries, one thing is clear: it represents a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers. Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?