- mostly unusual cool maps of countries or continents -

lørdag

New Cali...Mega Texas... and good old Mexico!

The Icelandic waters are full of monsters!

United States of Animals

The World of California

The Illustration of The Great European War No.16 - A humoros Atlas of the World

Gnomes of Europe
























"The Secret Book of Gnomes was a series of books designed for children. They contained stories and a guide to how Gnomes lived in harmony with their environment, such as what a Gnome has in their first aid kit and how a Gnome's house is built. They were written by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet, though they claimed that it was written by a Gnome called David. Those authors also created another series about Gnomes entitled The Gnomes. They later were used as a basis for the television shows David the Gnome and Wisdom of the Gnomes by BRB Internacional."

from Wikipedia

mandag

Sri Lanka - jewel in the crown
























Sri Lanka (Ceylon) dominates the top of the map - and suddenly seems like the crown of India!

søndag

Area Codes In Which Ludacris Claims to Have Hoes
















Area codes in which Ludacris claims to have hoes in the song “Area Codes,”.

Australia comes in many colors






















"He showed us a map of Australia. Not the one with the states, but one with hundreds of countries, coloured just like the maps of Europe. Each country had its own tribe, its own language. This is the other Australia, the one that whites have been destroying. How many of these nations are now lost for ever?

The aborigines are a very ancient people. Some of these nations go back thousands of years, back before the beginning of Egypt and China. Much of their hard-won knowledge has now been lost." abagond

New India?



















A old map of what was then believed to be India (or New India). Very rough and inaccurate outline, but it does show some sea life and a route to New India!

mandag

Prototopological World Map




















As insolvable problems go, it’s right up there with attempts to square the circle. Try as you might, it is impossible to render a three-dimensional object (the Earth, say) on a two-dimensional surface (a world map) without distortion.

Take for example the Mercator projection, still one of the most widespread ways of depicting the world on a map. Because of its cilindrical projection method, areas near the poles are shown much larger than they actually are. In a Mercator projection, Greenland is about the same size as Africa, while in fact Africa’s area is 14 times that of Greenland’s.

All sorts of other map projections have been devised since Mercator’s (practical because it allowed for rhumb lines – used in nautical navigation – to be drawn as straight lines), but none of them have managed to eliminate completely the distortion inherent in converting 3D to 2D.

Chuck Clark has found a novel way to reduce the distortion, though. The Atlanta architect has long been fascinated by world maps, and has devised a way to produce constant-scale natural boundary world maps. All the continents (and the oceans) are shown in a true scale. But to do the maps justice, you will need a pair of scissors, a bit of folding and some glue…

“The art historian Erwin Panofsky (…) called this prototopology, which means merely that the map, when properly folded, resembles the object”, Mr Clark explains on his website.

This prototopological map (constant-scale natural boundary map is even more of a mouthful) of the Earth is an early example of Mr Clark’s csnb maps, and concentrates on the watersheds: the outer edge of the map is constituted by (sub)continental watersheds. For example, north of the rift splitting open Europe, water flows to the Atlantic, south of it, water flows into the Mediterranean.

“What is nice about this map is that at a single glance you see the Earth’s oceans and the lands that drain into them, all in proper proportion, shape and size”, says Mr Clark.

For more information, more recent maps (without graticules) and future updates, check Mr Clark’s brand spanking new weblog: Right Basic Building.

fredag

torsdag

All the stateless nations of Europe
























Iceland and Denmark seems - more or less - to be the only real nations in Europe...

tirsdag

The World??
















France, Sweden and Britain sharing the world...

mandag

Starbucks & McDonalds taking over the world
















It's true! It is the fries & beans that bind us!....Kind of Scary

Swiss Airlines Map of The Middle East























Tel Aviv is in the ocean, Jeddah lies on the bottom of the red sea - And Dubai is in Iran??

søndag

The UK according to America


The World’s Most Populous Countries


What is Spain & Portugal Doing south of Australia?


The United Countries of Baseball


I love the UCB!

The World has turned!


The Island of California


"North America" as never seen in real life...




The North American landmass is divided amongst several neighbouring countries. The North American League - Solemn League and Covenant is a country formed from colonies of the various British powers (mostly English and Kemrese). The capital of the NAL-SLC is at Philadelphia; other cities of note are New Castreleon / Niuw Amsterdam; Boston; Georgetown; Alexandria and Chicago.
There are thirty Provinces that comprise the NAL-SLC, apart from the Unincorporated Territory, which seems to comprise its own self contained concatenation of provinces. Date of Brotherhood is shown in brackets. Note that Mississippi (25) was taken in the 1828 War with Louisiana and was subsequently returned as the Louisianan province of St. Onge. Note also that East and West Florida have two dates, their original date of signing the Covenant and their date of readmission after decades of Spanish Floridian occupation.

1. Alba Nuadh / New Scotland (1803)
2. Virginia (1803)
3. Castreleon New / Nieuw Batavie (1803)
4. Pennsylvaania (1803)
5. Aquanishuonigy / Six Nations (1803)
6. Massachussets Bay (1803)
7. West Florida (1803, 2005)
8. New Hampshire (1803)
9. Rhode Island (1803)
10. East Florida (1803, 2005)
11. Connecticutt (1803)
12. Kent (1803)
13. Ontario (1803)
14. Ter Mair / Maryland (1803)
15. Carolina (1803)
16. Bahamas (1803)
17. Jamaica (1803)
18. Jacobia (1803)
19. Oxbridge (1804)
20. Cherokee Nation (1806)
21. Tenisi (1812)
22. Kentuckey (1816)
23. Mobile (1820)
24. New Sweden (1824)
25. Mississippi (1828-1831)
26. Illinoise (1832)
27. Miami (1835)
28. Ouiscinsin (1835)
29. Utawia (1877)
30. Mascoutensi (1883)
31. Mueva Sefarad / New Spain* (1899)
32. Les Plaines (1904)
33. Nja Island / New Iceland (2001)
34. Nunavik (2004)

torsdag

Tory Atlas of the world



The World in George Orwell’s "1984"












In George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, the world is ruled by three superstates:

Oceania covers the entire continents of America and Oceania and the British Isles, the main location for the novel, in which they are referred to as ‘Airstrip One’.
Eurasia covers Europe and (more or less) the entire Soviet Union.
Eastasia covers Japan, Korea, China and northern India.

Unfortunately, there’s not much ’super’ to these states except their size. All three are totalitarian dictatorships. Oceania’s ideology is Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia’s Neo-Bolshevism and Eastasia’s is the Obliteration of the Self (one imagines some kind of buddhist-inspired fascism. If one can). These ideologies are very similar, but the people are not informed of this.

The three states are in a perpetual state of warfare – sometimes two against one, sometimes all three against each other. These wars are fought in the disputed territories, running from North Africa over the Middle East and southern India to Southeast Asia.

And yet…

And yet the war might just not even be real at all. It’s clear that the Oceanic media are one-sided and fabricate ‘facts’. A dissident book central to ‘1984’ suggests the two other powers may actually be a fabrication of the government of Oceania, which would make it the world government. Or, on the other side of the scale of thinkable alternatives: Airstrip One is not an outpost of a greater empire, but the sole territory under the command of Ingsoc, which fabricates eternal global war to keep its people permanently mobilised, scrutinised and on rations. "Strange Maps"

The map taken from Wikipedia’s ‘1984′ page.

tirsdag

Columbus never found America!












United States of America never existed!

mandag

Germany after World War I ? Hope not...


















This is how some Germans hoped Europe would look like after World War I

Africa - Just Before World War I

























From the time where Africa was the Backyard of Europe.

Notice that Europe, has been included in the map...

søndag

Japan meets USA


















I don't get it!

Post War World - as seen in 1942


















This post war map was created by the US army in 1942

Before the States
























Before the highways and fast food chains ...

A New Iceland
























"Due to harsh environmental and economic conditions in Iceland, for example volcanic eruptions, a considerable number of Icelanders left their homeland during the 19th century. Eventually, the main group of Icelandic settlers migrating from Ontario to Manitoba left Kinmount on September 25, 1875. One of the main reasons for the choice of Lake Winnipeg as the colony site was “the abundance of fish,” but according to the Icelandic people in Manitoba, “their first attempts at fishing on Lake Winnipeg were not successful.” For this reason, many Icelanders in their first years were hungry; moreover, their first “winter of 18751876 was one of the coldest on record in Manitoba, and the settlers’ clothes, including the leather shoes from Ontario, were not suitable for the rigorous weather.” However, immigrants eventually learned to handle the axe, how to prepare the soil, fish through ice and hunt game. They learned how to dry the land, build better houses, etc. They, the people from Iceland (or Vestur-Íslendingar, which means Western Icelanders in the Icelandic language) called their habitation New Iceland, and the region is the center of Icelandic heritage in Canada today." Wikipedia

Driving the World












Another traffic map of sorts. If this world map vaguely looks like it’s highlighting a remnant of the British Empire, that’s no coincidence. This map shows which side of the road traffic drives on.

Dark blue: drives on left (mainly British ex-colonies).
Light blue: used to drive on right, now on left (Namibia).
Purple: used to have mixed system, now drives on right.
Light red: used to drive on left, now on right.
Dark red: drives on right.

lørdag

World of Spam














So this is where all the spam is send form...

fredag

Old World meets New World



“The Virginia Company Chart, 1606–08.”

Europe in 1097


The Northwest Passage ...now with elephants


Zatta, Antonio, fl. 1757-1797“Nuove Scoperte De'Russi al Nord del Mare del Sud si nell'Asia, che nell'America”(1776). Copperplate map, 29.9 x 38.4 cm., handcolored. From Zatta's Atlante novissimo (Venice, 1775-1785). [Historic Maps Collection: purchased with funds provided by Robert M. Backes, Class of 1939.]

Thank God that this is fiction!


If Nazi Germany had won...

The World According to Ronald Reagan


The map shows an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ bipolarity, with exaggerated sizes for (non-American) ‘good guys’ such as:

Thatcherland (the UK - “a subsidiary of Disneyland”, in this map also including Ireland)
Acidrainia (a smallish rendering of Canada - “a wholly-owned US subsidiary”)
Grenada (the Carribean island Reagan had invaded to overthrow a socialist regime - “our airport”)
El Salvador (the Central American country heavily supported militarily against leftist rebels, adjacent to “our canal” which in actual fact is completely within Panamanian territory)
Falklands (the British archipelago off South America which the UK reconquered after an Argentinian invasion in 1983)
Our China (i.e. Taiwan, but oversized)
Japan Corporation (in the shape of an automobile, at a moment when the Japanese car industry was overtaking the homegrown manufacturers in importance)
Our Oil (Saudi Arabia and, one would suspect at that time also Saddam Hussein’s Iraq)
Israel (made out to occupy a large area of the Middle East, including Beirut - which it did in the early Eighties)

The ‘bad guys’ are:

USSR (”godless communists, liars and spies”)
Poland occupies a separate place in the Soviet bloc, as its resistance against the communist system was a precursor to the wave of liberation that swept across Eastern Europe in 1989.
Their China (Communist China, by no means friendly with Soviet Russia - but equally ‘evil and godless’)
Soviet Colony (Cuba)
Muslim fanatics (i.e. Iran)
Socialists and pacifists (probably referring to the huge popular protests in Europe against the deployment of Pershing II cruise missiles by NATO)
Other areas are so insignificant (either in a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ way that they’re portrayed as tiny:
Mariachiland (Mexico)
Bananaland (the rest of Latin America)
Egypt/Negroes (Africa)
Injuns (India, but spelled so as to refer to ‘red Indians’ - a reference to Reagan’s career as a Hollywood actor, no doubt)
Kangaroos (Australia)
Palestinian Homeland (proposed) (located in a faraway placee)
Interestingly, the US itself is also divided into good and bad:
California (oversized, as it was Reagan’s home state)
Republicans and other real Americans (running from Las Vegas to the White House)
Ecotopia (the northwest - “environmental freaks and quiche eaters”)
Democrats and welfare bums (the northeast - including “Big Government”)

torsdag

Dutch America
























New Amsterdam never gave way to New York. The Dutch kept the whole of their North American colony out of the hands of the perfidious English, in fact. New Netherland today constitutes a thriving Republic stretching from the Atlantic coast to Québec, dividing New England from the rest of the United States.

New America?
























“The names suggested for these ten States are a peculiar mixture of Latin and Indian, and while a semblance of some of the names still remains in two cases, in all others it is so absolutely forgotten that the very fact has ceased to be known by many close students of American history. Yet, besides this humane and noble piece of statesmanship (the proposed prohibition of slavery in the territory) we have a glimpse of that absurd element in Jefferson’s mind which his admirers sought to excuse by calling him a ‘philosopher’. The matter is small, to be sure, but suggestive. He proposed as names for the several subdivisions of this territory: Sylvania, Michigania, Cheronesus, Assenisippis, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, and Pelipsia.”

South America according to Hitler


“Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it,” revealed US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his Navy Day address to the nation, broadcast on 27 October 1941.

United State of Yugoslav America

Germany is in Switzerland


The town of Büsingen am Hochrhein is one of two foreign enclaves enclosed within the territory of Switzerland. Büsingen has a long, intimate knowledge of borders, being located on the old limes between the Roman empire and the Germanic barbarians.

The new old mexico - Vodka Style