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Pigs (or hogs, or swine, or Sus – the Latin name for the species) are  omnivorous mammals of Eurasian origin, closely related to hippopotami and generally more known for being tasty than clever […]

n n What is it with airlines and maps? Which part of ‘atlas’ don’t they understand? You’d think that, being the business of transportation, they’d get their distances and directions […]

Many New Yorkers feel their city is more than just the (self-proclaimed) capital of the world. They think it actually is most of the world, the rest of the planet […]

I’m on a bit of a roll here, as far as strange World War II maps are concerned. Here’s another one, again from the German side, found at this page […]

n The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901. Its constitution provides for the creation of new states, also by subdividing extisting ones. Several proposals have been made to alter […]

n Fixing her regional loyalty in indelible ink on skin, Julia had a map of Portland, ME tattooed on her shoulder. A comparison with the more conventional map on the […]

For a brief window of time after the fall of communism, it really seemed that the world was at the ‘end of history‘. That phrase was coined by Francis Fukuyama, […]

n As discussed before on this blog, electoral maps have a strange tendency to transmit more than the results of a political horse-race. They often serve as quirky memorials of […]

n Safe, neutral, boring Switzerland is a strangely fertile source of curious cartography. Previously, this blog has zoomed in on wartime contingency plans for a Schweizer réduit (#109), Jules Verne’s […]

Cuius Regio, Eius Religio – this Latin saying applies to Europe, and to the principle that ended religious warfare: “Whose region (it is), whose religion (shall predominate)”. But it sprang […]

n British-born sculptor Tony Cragg (°1949, Liverpool) left his native land in 1977 to work on the Continent. He now resides in Wuppertal, Germany. This work, entitled ‘Britain Seen From […]

n A map that does justice to the strangeness of the Cooch Behar enclave complex risks either to be too big to conveniently post here, or too small to show […]

An obscure but ancient branch of loom art, weaving current events into carpets

One of the mainstays of speculative history (together with “What if the South had won the US Civil War?”) is: What would the world have looked like if the Nazis […]

n n I first encountered the term ‘galoshes’ in the same Russian novels that also introduced me, albeit equally theoretically, to the samowar*. Subsequently, I’ve always thought of galoshes (also […]

“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet,” writes Swedish artist Erik Nordenankar on his website for the project, appropriately […]

The world can be sliced and diced in many ways, and one of them is by dividing it into the 245 ccTLDs that cover every country and territory in the […]

n This remarkable painting was made by the Norwegian artist Rolf Groven as a poster proposal for Norway’s pavilion at the World Exhibition in Seville (Spain) in 1992. The title […]

n . n “No, I already understand how to copy and paste,” says the bearded man on his mobile to some kind of computer helpline. “What I want to do […]

Two tidbits from New Zealand: nn nn – A recent survey of volcanoes in the Kermadec Arc north of New Zealand suggest that there is abundant – and recent – […]

n The Eurovision Song Contest proves that H.L. Mencken’s famous dictum about quality standards in the US media – “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” […]

The second part of Eruptions readers’ recollections of the historic May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

I once booked a hire car to drive from Binghamton in New York State to Toronto. As I recall it was a four by four with plenty of space in […]