Maybe Ponce de Leon Didn't Discover Florida

“Floridians need to stop living under the illusion that Ponce was our famous founder. We need to get beyond the tourism hoax of the Fountain of Youth and learn about our complicated history.”
Uh-oh. Those are fighting words to Floridians and Florida tourism officials and a big disappointment to the millions of kids who learned in school that Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León was the first European to set foot in what is now Florida while he was searching for the Fountain of Youth. The Fountain of Youth myth has been discounted in a variety of ways, but the ‘first European’ designation has persisted. That may finally be corrected as well with the discover of a small map and a large pile of conch shells which a new book claims are evidence the first European in Florida was not Spain’s de Leon but quite possibly Italy’s John Cabot who was sailing under the flag of England.