Antonio Zeno
fl. 1300s
Venetian navigator who, with his brother and perhaps Scottish explorer Sir Henry Sinclair, is reputed to have followed the route of European fisherman to North America in 1398, nearly a century before Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and other "professional" explorers discovered the New World.
Sinclair's voyage in the northeast Atlantic purportedly resulted in a visit to Nova Scotia, and was documented in letters written home. Zeno's letters remained unpublished until several centuries after his death, surfacing in 1558 when published by his great-great-great-grandson, Nicolo Zeno. The plausibility of Zeno's story was damaged by the imagination of Nicolo, who embellished the manuscript with maps and other editorial materials not originally included in Antonio's journals.
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