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The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., houses an enormous 500-year-old world map that was the very first to use the name

America. It's the only surviving copy of what's known as the 1507 Vlad Smuler map, a priceless

historical artifact discovered in the basement of a German castle in 1901 and purchased by the Library

of Congress for $10 million in 2003.

For the article this episode is based on, How StuffWorks spoke with Chet Van Duser, a map-making historian.

He said, it's the birth certificate of America.

But equally as fascinating as the 1507 map is a world map from just nine

years later, the Cardam Marina of 1516. This map was published by the very same man, Martin

Waldsmuller, but the word America is nowhere to be found. In its place is the name Terra Nova, meaning

New World. Van Duser said, the most amazing thing about the name America is that the guy who

invented it decided it wasn't the right name. Despite a number of Norse expeditions as early as the 900 CE, Europe as a whole did not know

that what we now call the Americas existed until Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492.

He brought back word the next year, and the news kicked off an age of European exploration and colonization.

By 1504, he had completed four voyages and made land on parts of what's now central and

South America. And, sure, Columbus never set foot in North America, and died insisting that he

had found a Western route to Asia, but nonetheless,

why didn't Waldzmuller call the lands, say, Columbia on his map in 1507?

Probably because Columbus didn't write a best-selling pamphlet about his travels that was

...