It's a problem that has plagued cartographers for centuries: How do you accurately represent a round world on a flat map? The most common world map used today, designed almost 450 years ago, is highly ...

<br>In 150 AD, the Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy wrote a textbook entitled the <i>Geography, </i>which earned him the title ‘The Father of Geography’. Drawing on nearly a thousand years of classical ...

Ever wondered why Greenland looks as big as Africa on the map? It’s because of something called the Mercator projection. Putting a 3-D planet on a two-dimensional world map was challenging for early ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Ever since we discovered Earth was round, mapmakers have struggled to ...

Walk into any school classroom and you will likely see a flat, rectangular map of the world sprawled across the wall. Generations of children have grown up learning that this projection is what Earth ...

Most common world maps are highly size distorted, with any land masses located toward the poles tending to look much bigger than they really are, which, in some ways, makes this weird-looking ...

Etymology - the origin of words - is a fascinating subject on its own (especially for a word geek like me), but apply it geographically and it throws up a smorgasbord of interesting, out-there and ...

Data Points is a new series where we explore the world of data visualization, information graphics, and cartography. Maps. They’ve been around longer than photographs. They’ve defined empires,guided ...