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By: Meagan Snow
The end of the 19th century saw a rise in the proliferation of data visualizations alongside traditional cartography and thematic mapping. A terrific example of this type of work is Scribner’s Statistical Atlas of the United States, which “shows by graphic methods [the states’] present condition and their political, social, and industrial development.” The atlas …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Tim St. Onge
The Panoramic Maps Collection, one of our most popular collections, features more than a thousand beautifully illustrated “bird’s-eye-view” maps of towns and cities across the United States, Canada, and even some internationally. To celebrate this collection, we are excited to launch View from Above: Exploring the Panoramic Map Collection, an interactive map that makes browsing …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Sonia Kahn
Today on Halloween children often dress up as witches and wizards with brimmed hats and broom sticks. Many find joy in the celebration of all things spooky by donning a costume and an alternate identity for a single night. Of course 300 plus years ago this innocuous enough tradition was non-existent. No, in fact, quite …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Meagan Snow
Many things unite humankind across the centuries, but chief among them is the great eternal question: what time can I expect the mail today? In today’s world, we’ve become accustomed to our new-found ability to track packages on our phones as they move toward us in real-time. Let’s take a look back in time to …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Amelia Raines
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Meagan Snow
In mid-19th Century America, an expanding nation had a major transportation need: rail lines that could stretch from coast to coast. Western explorations and survey crews began to sketch out potential railroad routes in the decades before the American Civil War. Lloyd’s American railroad map of the US, seen below, shows three proposed rail routes: …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Manuscript Division reference librarian Lara Szypszak. On September 17, 1862, Union and Confederate forces met just outside the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. The battle, known by Union forces as the Battle of Antietam (after the nearby creek) and by the Confederates as the Battle of Sharpsburg (after the nearest …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Amelia Raines
When Ohio became a state in 1803, breaking off from the Northwest Territory, parts of the border remained ambiguous. Three decades later, this ambiguity led to a conflict between Ohioans and Michiganders which became known as the Toledo War. In the state’s enabling act, the northern boundary of Ohio was defined as “an east and …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Julie Stoner
Please join us for the second session in a new series of virtual orientations for the Geography and Map Division, focusing on our collection of fire insurance maps! Date: Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 Time: 3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern) Location: Zoom Register Here Reference librarians Amelia Raines and Julie Stoner will present an introduction to the fire insurance maps housed …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed
By: Amelia Raines
The dramatic eruption of Krakatoa (or Krakatau in Indonesian) in 1883 was, as our sister blog Headlines and Heroes describes it, “one of the first global catastrophes.” By its very destruction, this small Indonesian island was thrust onto the world stage, its name becoming almost shorthand for volcanic disaster. Geologist Rogier Verbeek, who had briefly …
Posted in: Worlds Revealed