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Posted by: Mike Klein
The small sun baked village of Kodok receives little attention these days. Lying on the west bank of the Upper Nile River in the world’s newest state, South Sudan, its population has swelled within the last few years due to an increase in refugees fleeing genocide and poverty in Sudan. Save for a few dusty …
Posted in: African History
Posted by: Mike Klein
There aren’t many official maps of the Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine. In fact, we would not expect to find any at all, for the country arrived into this world on the morning of March 15, 1939, and passed into history that very evening, a fatality of the common maladies afflicting vulnerable, neo-natal states, i.e. poor timing, …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, European History
Posted by: Mike Klein
During World War I, the most hazardous place to be, relatively speaking, was not on the battlefield, but inside a German U-boat. Throughout the war, Germany deployed 375 Unterseebooten, i.e. U-boats or submarines; 202 were lost in action, or about fifty-four percent. Similarly, of the 17,000 sailors who served in them, about 5,100 were lost …
Posted in: European History, Military History
![Plan goroda Dalʹni︠a︡go / glavnyĭ inzhener V. Sakharov. [Russia]: Litografiia T. Daloniago, [around 1899]. Map, lithographic print. Scale approximately 1:21,000. 0.01 [represents] 100 sagenes. Geography and Map Division. LC call number G7824.D3 1899 .S3](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2019/10/Untitled-1.jpg)
Posted by: Mike Klein
In 1898 Tsarist Russia wrested from China a long-term lease for Port Arthur (Lushun), its new-found warm-water port on the east coast restricted to use by the Russian navy. Under pressure from Great Britain and Germany, two other European powers with concessions in China, Russia agreed to establish an open port on the southern tip …
Posted in: 19th century cartography
![Mappa Geographica Circuli Metalliferi Electoratus Saxoniae cum omnibus quae in eo comprehenduntur Praefecturis et Dynastiis quales sunt. (Augsburg: Mattaeus Seutter, 174-). Copperplate engraving on two separate sheets, with water color wash. Scale ca. 1:10,250,000. Geography and Map Division. Germany – Saxony – [174-] – no scale -- M. Seutter](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2019/08/Untitled-3.jpg)
Posted by: Mike Klein
Who says you can’t go Baroque from mining? On the contrary, many European regions, states, and principalities owed their prosperity to mining. Among them was the Electorate of Saxony, long a state of the former Holy Roman Empire. Saxony’s Ore Mountains, or Erzgebirge, were particularly blessed with silver, serving as one of its main sources …
Posted in: 18th century cartography
![Detail from Africa : corrected from the observations of the Royal Society at London and Paris. [London : John Senex, 1725?] Geography and Map Division. LC call number G8200 1725 .S4](https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/files/2019/07/default-2.jpg)
Posted by: Mike Klein
German genocide in southwest Africa
Posted in: African History
Posted by: Mike Klein
Most historians consider the Italo-Ottoman War, 1911-12, as a prelude to World War I. Although it has fallen into obscurity, some relics, such as this compelling panoramic map of the war’s first major engagement, may revive our interest. Italy’s claims to North Africa were rooted in Roman times. Over the millennia, the provinces of Tripolitania …
Posted in: Military History
Posted by: Mike Klein
Called the “father of temperature mapping,” the renowned German naturalist and climatologist, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) devised the concept of the isotherm, which he described in 1816 as a “curve drawn through points on a globe which receive an equal quantity of heat.” Humboldt’s initial diagram map of average temperatures appeared in 1817 in an …
Posted in: 19th century cartography