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Article: Maps and chaps.(THE STRAGGLER)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 31, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CARTOGRAPHY has been in the news recently. It was just 500 years ago this April that a German monk named Martin Waldseemuller produced the first world map to use the name "America" for our continent. Only one copy of that map survived the centuries. It is in the Library of Congress, which currently has it on display to mark the quincentenary.
The Waldseemuller map is something of a mystery. It shows the Americas approximately as they are, joined by an isthmus, separated from Asia by a large ocean. There is the mystery. Balboa reached the Pacific by land only in 1513 (six years before "stout Cortez," of course); Magellan reached ...