Answer: (what google said) Christopher is credited with discovering the Americas in 1492 Americans get a day off work on October 10 to celebrate Columbus Day. It's an annual holiday that commemorates the day on October 12, 1492, when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus officially set foot in the Americas, and claimed the land for Spain.
(what I say because the country is named after him) Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who notably mapped the South American coast between 1500 and 1502. However, newly discovered lands were never named after a person's first name.