When Christie’s London put up another map for auction last December, experts became suspicious by comparing their specimen with the copy in Munich. Subsequently, material science tests revealed that around 1960, both maps were drawn from an original kept at the University of Minnesota in the States; where else? At least we know that the specimen preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, is an original.
There is another copy in Freiburg near where once Waldseemüller’s parents’ house, the Haus zum Hechtkopf (pike head), stood.
Visiting the place this morning, I learned that it was not Martinus Ilacomilus who had invented the name but Philesius Vogesigena (Matthias Ringmann).
Then Waldseemüller wrongly (?) wrote America on the map.
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