October 19, 2026
The Hereford Mappa Mundi: A Medieval Map Made to Explain the World
Created around 1300, the Hereford Mappa Mundi is less a route-finding tool than a vast, illustrated picture of how its…
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Maps
October 19, 2026
Why USGS Topographic Maps Come in 7.5-Minute Slices
A USGS map’s “7.5 minutes” describes the span of latitude and longitude it covers—not how long it takes to read.…
October 19, 2026
Why Greenland Looks So Large on a Mercator Map—and What the Projection Is For
The Mercator projection makes it easy to plot a steady compass course as a straight line. Its trade-off is that…
October 19, 2026
The Map Before the Emergency: How Volunteers Add Missing Roads and Buildings
Humanitarian mapping volunteers trace roads and buildings from satellite imagery, helping create open map data that aid groups and communities…
October 19, 2026
The 1507 Map That Put “America” on the World
A large woodcut map made in Europe gave a newly recognized landmass a name that endured. Its story is less…
September 5, 2026
What Prescott Looked Like in 1901: A Map of the City’s Early Years
A 1901 Sanborn fire insurance map preserved by the Library of Congress offers a fascinating look at Prescott as it…