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Reading the Map
Jerusalem World Map, Heinrich Bunting, 1581 (courtesy of the Osher Map Library) For the last two weeks, we’ve been on a long road trip: from Connecticut to Ohio, Illinois, upstate Michigan, and back to...
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Digital Archive: Strange Maps
NASA map of astronaut routes over the Moon, superimposed over soccer field Blogs are living things. They have their own cycles of growth, promiscuity, maturity, and senescence. Some rise above the...
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Digital Archive: AfricaBib
Mary Kingsley, African explorer, ca 1890 For me, graduate school was a happy time, of long days in the archives and long afternoons in the Ratskeller. To be fair though there were also moments of...
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New Worlds
Life cover from 22 February 1954 featuring shot of film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea At times I think about getting rid of my laptop, dumping it into the trash or tossing it over the guardrail on I-84....
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On Cannibalism
Sir John Franklin In 1845 the Franklin Expedition sailed from England as the jewel of British polar enterprise. With 129 men and two steam-powered, hull-reinforced ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, the...
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Asia on Top
Zheng He's fleet sailing the Western (Indian) Ocean, 1405-1433. 20th century painting, artist unknown. Exploration seems an inclusive concept, a big-tent activity that admits anyone with a geographical...
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New Arctic Exhibition
Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio, Gerard Mercator, 1611. A polar projection showing islands and open water at the North Pole. Apologies for the spare postings over the last two weeks. I’ve been...
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Mountains of the Moon
Mountains of the Moon, detail of 1655 Kircher Map of Africa In 1788, twenty years after sailing into the Pacific with Captain Cook, Joseph Banks turned his attention to the next riddle of geographical...
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The Remotest Place on Earth
Travel times to major cities. Shipping lanes in blue. Image Credit: NewScientist This week, NewScientist announced the remotest place on earth: 34.7°N 85.7°E, a cold, rocky spot 17,500 ft up the...
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Interview with Felix Driver
A Malay native from Batavia at Coepang, portrait of Mohammed Jen Jamain by Thomas Baines. Courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society The history of exploration does not have its own departments in...
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