Today is Thursday, April 25, the 115th day of 2019. There are 250 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On April 25, 1507, a world map produced by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller contained the first recorded use of the term "America," in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci (vehs-POO'-chee).
Sure glad he didn't use his own name for the continent. Welcome to Waldseemuellerica.
Two names that America could have received before the arrival of the Europeans were Zuania (of Caribbean origin) and Abya-Yala (used by the Kuna people of Panama). But we do not really know if the pre-Columbian peoples knew what the map of America was like, so we do not know if they gave these names to the whole area that we know as America.
In fact we do not really know what the American continent was called before it was called America. The natives had different names to indicate cities, rivers or kingdoms. Some of these names are still used today, both in North America and in South America (Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tegucigalpa, etc.). But we do not know if they had names to indicate the entire continent.
The names we have indicated (Zuania and Abya-Yala) are admitted by some scholars as names that indicate the American continent, but there are other theories that claim that they only referred to a part of it.
