n n What is it with airlines and maps? Which part of ‘atlas’ don’t they understand? You’d think that, being the business of transportation, they’d get their distances and directions […]

nMississippi is the fattest state in the Union, with 30.1% of Mississippians being obese. That’s almost one in every three inhabitants. Not that the Magnolia State (in red on this […]

n n In 1989, Swedish author Herman Lindquist published Rapporter från Mittens Rike (‘Reports from the Middle Kingdom’). The title of the book is ambiguous, as it refers to the well-known […]

Spain, now a fully integrated member of the European Union, once was considered so alien to the rest of Europe that Alexandre Dumas is known to have remarked that “Africa […]

The Toscanelli map grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference (and left out America)

This crazy scheme would have restored the prehistoric land bridge between the UK and the Continent

Cannibalism is the ultimate yardstick for barbarity, and the ideal excuse to subjugate the accused  

n n I first encountered the term ‘galoshes’ in the same Russian novels that also introduced me, albeit equally theoretically, to the samowar*. Subsequently, I’ve always thought of galoshes (also […]

n n An interesting proposal has surfaced to help resolve the intra-Belgian political stalemate between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speakers, who prevail in Brussels and Wallonia: a couloir francophone (‘Francophone corridor’) […]

n China has land borders with 14 other countries – a world record*. And yet you should not think of China as particularly well-integrated with its neighbours. In fact, as […]

The map on the bedroom wall of every teenage Bilderberger

Did we miss a utopia or avoid a disaster?

The semi-mythical Greek is not only the father of the epic poem, but also of geography

The rough beauty of the American West seems as far as you can get from the polished corridors of power in Washington DC.

n Genetically modified crops are controversial and indeed have been banned in several locations because of concerns that they may cause unintended, as yet unforeseen and potentially hazardous consequences. These […]

“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet,” writes Swedish artist Erik Nordenankar on his website for the project, appropriately […]

n This is a print ad for a Dutch brand of ice coffee, the slogan of which is: ‘The Ice Cold Coffee Kick For On the Road’. The drink’s interest […]

n The Eurovision Song Contest proves that H.L. Mencken’s famous dictum about quality standards in the US media – “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” […]

The title of Daniel Mansfield’s email was ‘Cheese Map of Canada’, so I immediately thought it would be a variation on the bread map of France (described earlier on this blog […]

“Heaven is a place,” sang the Talking Heads, “where nothing ever happens.” Not so in this version of the Afterlife. This is what Heaven might have looked like in the […]