stackyFACTSThose terrifying sea serpents inked onto old nautical charts were not actual warnings of peril. Mapmakers simply hated leaving vast expanses of paper totally blank because it made them look underqualified. Slapping a giant squid over an uncharted region was the professional equivalent of shrugging.
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Early attempts to draw the globe were basically games of telephone. Cartographers would interview sailors who had spoken to other sailors, resulting in wild…
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Calling a book of maps an 'atlas' has nothing to do with the maps themselves. In 1595, a famous cartographer simply slapped an illustration of the mythical…
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Actual swashbucklers never buried their gold and they certainly did not draw convenient maps with a massive red letter on them. Robert Louis Stevenson…
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Instead of drawing little cartoon mountains, professionals use contour lines to represent elevation on a totally flat piece of paper. When the concentric…
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If you look at medieval charts, you will be holding them sideways. Because the sun rises in the east, early mapmakers considered it the most important…
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In a desperate attempt to fix the size distortion of traditional maps, this alternative projection accurately represents the true scale of continents. The…
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