A mistake that caused the name of New York City's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to be misspelled for more than 50 years has finally been corrected. On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill adding a second letter 'Z' to the name of the country's longest suspension bridge, which links Brooklyn with Staten Island.

The name had been spelled with one 'Z', even though it should have had two to reflect the name of Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who discovered New York harbor in 1524. The misspelling dates back decades to the construction contract signed before the bridge opened in 1964. Author Gay Talese, who chronicled the construction in his book, "The Bridge," called it simply a "typo and everybody let it go."