Growing up in a Brazilian-American household, I’ve long appreciated the delicious versatility of the Atlantic cod, scientific name Gadus morhua, known to the Portuguese-speaking world as bacalhau in its preferred salted and dried form. It was only when I began working as a map librarian, however, that I saw how powerful cod truly was. Centuries …
This post is about maps related to the voyages of Sir Francis Drake in the collections of the Library of Congress. The maps are held in both the Geography and Map Division and the Hans Peter Kraus Collection of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
A picture of a skull and crossbones marks the location of a special collection in the Geography and Map Division. The collection consists of wreck charts published by U.S. federal government agencies, treasure maps made by famous cartographers during the 18th and 19th centuries, and treasure maps published by commercial companies during the mid -20th …
The story of the naming of America has been told before – not surprisingly considering the object central to the story, Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map, is one of the most important treasures in the Geography and Map Division. The name was bestowed by the mapmaker to show his support for Amerigo Vespucci’s argument that …
Featured below is a map known as the “Map with Ship.” The map was donated to the Library of Congress in 1943 by a retired merchant and author named Marcian F. Rossi. Marcian Rossi was born in Italy in 1870. He moved to the United States during the 1880s. The Rossi family inherited a collection …
Our new interactive map showcases the Climatological Database for the World's Oceans 1750-1850, an exciting digital acquisition of the Library of Congress.
In 1798, James Rennell, an English cartographer primarily known for his maps of British territories in India and South Asia, published A map shewing the progress of discovery & improvement, in the geography of North Africa. This map combined geographical information gathered from sources spanning more than 1.5 millennia, from recent explorers all the way …
