Do your elementary students know where America got its name? They’ll love time traveling with Leo and Layla to meet Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci—the man who realized that the New World was a new continent. | PragerU

America got its name because of an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. Born in Florence around 1454, Vespucci was a navigator and merchant in service of the powerful Medici family. While Christopher Columbus received acclaim for his 1492 voyage under the mistaken belief that he had reached the eastern shores of Asia, Vespucci began his own journeys along the South American coast around 1497 or 1499 and soon realized that he had found an entirely new continent. His vivid letters spread the i