The secessionist project hit its stride at exactly the worst time possible
All Articles
1. Asphalt Maine n n Looking down upon the patched-up surface of an unnamed street, J. David Lovejoy couldn’t help noticing a remarkable example of accidental geography. The patch bears […]
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 […]
Festive cheer is upon us, and some of it is even permeating this blog. But what does Christmas have to do with cartography? Well, there is Christmas Island – three […]
n n At the beginning of this new year, hardly any map could be as appropriate as this one of Calendria, a place made out of time. This wondrous world […]
This map was taken from the August 2, 1919 edition of the US news magazine Literary Digest, and originally appeared in the London Sphere. It details the projected break-up of the […]
Take the length of the equator on this map, double that distance and you have the width of a human hair. For this is the world’s smallest world map, with […]
The Vikings set foot in America just over a millennium ago, but credit for the discovery generally goes to Columbus, who only stumbled upon the New World almost 500 years later. […]
n So it’s 2010, and we’re not living on Mars, nor even zipping through the sky in flying cars. But neither do we have to bow to our new insect […]
n The rapid spread of the Great Fear was one of the weirder episodes in the early, confusing days of the French Revolution. This combination of a riot, a brush fire and […]
This cartographic predator was born in 1583, and would be cut in half barely 65 years later
A few miles northwest of the small town of Minden, in the seemingly endless Nebraska plains, lies a field shaped like the state itself. By intelligent design or as an accident of agriculture? […]
The Maine Solar System Model recreates the relative distances between the sun and planets along a stretch of U.S. Highway 1
Prester John as virtual as he was virtuous, the legend literally too good to be true.
The German polymath Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) also was a cartographer, and one with a penchant for strange maps. He produced an anthropomorphic map of Europe as a queen (#141) for […]
This extraordinary map, dating from 1675, details The Road From LONDON to the LANDS END Comencing at the Standard in Cornhill and Extending to Senan in Cornwall. It was made […]
I just love allegorical maps like these, if only for their delightfully straightforward semiotics. This map of the Road to Success depicts an actual road, winding up to success signified […]
n In September 1578, while sailing near Greenland’s southernmost point at Cape Farewell, captain James Newton of the Emmanuel recorded in his log the first sighting of an island “seeming […]
The Wheel of Mainz is an essential element of the heraldry of the German city and archbishopric of Mainz. It is a regionally prominent symbol in Rheinland-Pfalz (the Rhineland-Palatinate, one […]
Whether out of financial prudence or budgetary necessity, the annual summer vacation has been a “staycation” for millions of families during this recession year. Local attractions have had to do, […]
n At 404 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,040/mi2), the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated nations in the world (1). The country’s population density, over 23 times the […]
n The German language describes the difference between two main types of federal states aptly and concisely as being between a Bundesstaat (1) and a Staatenbund (2). The European Union, […]
n It was recently revealed that the recently deceased Michael Jackson thought he might have “cured” Adolf Hitler of his evil ways if he’d had an hour or so alone […]
With a society prospering in splendid isolation and a population smaller than one-thousandth of the EU total (1), Iceland until recently had little incentive to be subsumed by the Brussels […]
Like Russia or the UK, Turkey is the successor state to a once dominant world power. And much as in those other countries, nostalgic memories of Empire (the Ottoman one, […]
n How little information do you need to be able to draw a map? This zen-like question provided the basis for a short article in the May 21st, 1971 issue of […]
Faith and reason, usually jostling for primacy over one another, unite on this map to describe [t]he Earth-sphere after the Deluge in its broken state, shown with Mountains and valleys, […]
Designed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher and included in most editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the map of Middle-Earth is one of the best-known examples of fantasy […]
The McFarthest place is somewhere in South Dakota