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Posted by: Tim St. Onge
The 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off next week with over 10,000 athletes and many more tourists and attendees from around the world descending on the host city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is a sprawling metropolis with a population of 6 million people, situated along the Atlantic Ocean. But like the saying …
Posted in: City Histories, Exploration
Posted by: Tim St. Onge
This blog post is part of a summer series on imaginary maps, written by Hannah Stahl, a Library Technician in the Geography & Map Division. Read the introductory post to the series here. Our journey into imaginary worlds continues this week with maps of imaginary places that are related to children’s literature. My first exposure …
Posted in: Exploration, Series: Imaginary Maps in Literature and Beyond
Posted by: Carlyn Osborn
Today’s guest post is by Anthony Páez Mullan, a cartographic reference specialist in the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. He specializes in the historical cartography of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula and is a co-author of the “Luso-Hispanic World in Maps.” The Library of Congress recently acquired an important …
Posted in: Borders, Exploration, Exploring the Early Americas, Guest Posts, Manuscripts
Posted by: Carlyn Osborn
Please join us for a book talk with Dr. Geoffrey Martin, a leading historian of American geography, who will discuss his latest work, On the History of the Book — American Geography and Geographers: Toward Geographical Science (Oxford, 2015). In addition to Dr. Martin’s presentation, the Geography and Map Division will provide a small exhibit featuring rare …
Posted in: Events, Exploration
Posted by: Carlyn Osborn
Please join us for a book talk featuring the Chief of the Geography and Map Division, Ralph Ehrenberg, and Smithsonian Institution curator emeritus Herman J. Viola as they discuss their latest work, “Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark” (Levenger, 2015). The authors will present and sign copies of their book on Tuesday, January 19, …
Posted in: Borders, Events, Exploration
Posted by: Carlyn Osborn
Stretching nearly 2,000 miles from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mexico-U.S. border is the world’s single most crossed international boundary. With over a billion dollars worth of goods moving between the countries every day and 11 million people living within the border region, the history of the Mexico-U.S. boundary line is worth …
Posted in: American History, Borders, Exploration
Posted by: Carlyn Osborn
Florida: home to sunshine, oranges, spring breakers, and snowbirds. Or, in the words of the 16th century Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto: “full of bogs and poisonous fruits, barren, and the worst country that is warmed by the sun.” For over a hundred years, between Columbus’ initial contact in the Bahamas (1492) and the English …
Posted in: Exploration, Exploring the Early Americas
Posted by: John Hessler
As one of the curators of the largest map library on the planet, there are times when one comes across a map that just strikes you as unique, not only as piece of cartography, but also as a monument to the obsessions of antiquarians of the past, the present, and the future. Several days ago …
Posted in: Exploration