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Posted by: Mike Klein
By the 1890s the eyes of the western imperial powers were turning eastwards, especially towards Manchuria. Why had Manchuria become such a hot property? As any real estate agent will say, it’s “location, location, and location.” For Russia, its imperial gaze followed the ambitions of Tsar Nicholas II and Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who wanted …
Posted in: Asian History
Posted by: Julie Stoner
You are invited to join the Library of Congress in celebrating GIS Day on Wednesday, November 18th from 1-4pm EST, with an afternoon of engaging talks and discussions on the theme of “Mapping the Pandemic Cases, Traces, and Mutations.” This presentation will premiere with closed captions on both the Library’s YouTube site and on the Library …
Posted in: Big Data and Visualization, Events, Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Julie Stoner
If you were asked the location of the furthest point from the center of the Earth, you would likely be inclined to state the summit of Mount Everest as an obvious choice. Looking at the 1862 pictorial map below would seem to confirm that it would be in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia. Fascinatingly, due …
Posted in: Exploration, Physical Geography, Series: Extremities of the Earth
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
European colonists were fascinated with the wildlife of the Western Hemisphere. They described fauna native to the Americas in memoirs, travel journals and poetry. Pictures of the unfamiliar animals were often printed on maps. In this post I will discuss four colonial era maps that were decorated with illustrations of animals. The two maps of …
Posted in: 17th century cartography, 18th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Mike Klein
(The title of this post is a satirical improvisation on a quote attributed to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, when expressing his views towards the westward expansion of the United States.) Somewhere between China’s Heilongjiang Province (Manchuria) and the Russian Far East, nestled in a southern crook of Siberia’s Amur River, lies …
Posted in: Asian History
Posted by: Ed Redmond
Sponsored by the Leventhal Map Center of the Boston Public Library and the MacLean Collection Map Library in Chicago, IL, the Library of Congress is pleased to announce its participation entitled Mapping A World of Cities in a joint project with the American Geographical Society (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), the David Rumsey Map Center (Stanford Libraries, California), …
Posted in: City Histories
Posted by: Cynthia Smith
William Hacke was one of the most prolific manuscript chart makers for his time. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Hacke produced over 300 navigational charts from 1682 to 1702. In this post I will briefly discuss his career and his role in the pardon of the notorious pirate Bartholomew Sharp. William Hacke was …
Posted in: 17th century cartography, Biography, European History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Ed Redmond
In the years following the epic struggle for control of North America between the French and British empires, it became apparent to the Royal Navy that there was a considerable lack of adequate charting along the eastern coasts of North America. Thus was born one of the largest charting undertakings to date: The Atlantic Neptune. …
Posted in: 18th century cartography
Posted by: Julie Stoner
Celebrated as a state holiday in Utah, Pioneer Day commemorates the first members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entering the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Since the foundation of the Church in 1830, Latter-day Saints were faced with persecution and driven out of every community they started in New …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, City Histories