stackyFACTSEarly attempts to draw the globe were basically games of telephone. Cartographers would interview sailors who had spoken to other sailors, resulting in wild guesses and horribly warped coastlines. It was the geographical equivalent of trusting a guy who knows a guy.
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Those terrifying sea serpents inked onto old nautical charts were not actual warnings of peril. Mapmakers simply hated leaving vast expanses of paper totally…
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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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That awkward, angled mount holding every spinning globe in every library is not just a stylistic choice. It mimics the exact axial tilt of our planet relative…
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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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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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