500-year-old 'birth certificate of America' discovered The new find shows the world divided into 12 segments which taper to a point at each end and are printed on a single sheet, which, when folded out, form a small globe, with the three rightmost segments depicting a boomerang-shaped territory named America. Only four copies of the segmental maps were previously known about, the university said in a written statement. One of the four was sold at auction for $1 million in 2005. The fifth was found by a bibliographer, who was revising the catalogue, "in an otherwise unremarkable volume that had been rebound in the 19th century," it said. It was nestled between two printed works on geometry from the early 16th century. "Even in our digital age the originals have lost none of their significance and unique fascination," Klaus-Rainer Brintzinger, the head of the library, said in the statement. "We intend to make the map accessible to the public in digital form in time for the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the USA," he added.