With the English looking for a northwest passage and the Spanish pressing in to Florida and up the Atlantic Coast, the French get in to the exploration game. French King Francis I gets his own Italian explorer, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and sends him on a mission to explore the Atlantic Coast of North America and search for a shortcut to Asia between Florida and Newfoundland. Along the way, all sorts of interesting things happen, and we learn the accidental origin of the name of the American State of Rhode Island.
Selected references for this episode
Cuomo finally fixes a 50-year-old typo
The History of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, 50 Years After Its Construction
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America
Wikipedia
The History of the Americans