MetaFilter posts tagged with history and maps

Search the Bible with Google Maps

Effigy2000 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:49:53 -0800

Biblemap.org is an interactive map system for the bible, which is great for visualising where certain biblical events are said to have occured. It's also great for people who don't subscribe to any kind of organised religion but do like looking at maps (like me!).

Civil War Maps

marxchivist — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:34:07 -0800

The Civil War Preservation Trust has a wonderful page of assorted American Civil War maps. Includes the excellent CWPT topographical maps [viewable online, download .pdf requires free registration], and historical maps. My favorites are the animated maps, on the map of the First Day of Chancellorsville you can toggle between the topo map and a present-day satellite view so you can see the effects of modern development on the battlefield. [via]

400 Years Ago

netbros — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:35:41 -0800

Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609. “The goal of the Mannahatta Project has never been to return Manhattan to its primeval state. The goal of the project is to discover something new about a place we all know so well, whether we live in New York or see it on television, and, through that discovery, to alter our way of life. New York does not lack for dystopian visions of the future…. But what is the vision of the future that works? Might it lie in Mannahatta, the green heart of New York, and with a new start to history, a few hours before Hudson arrived that sunny afternoon four hundred years ago?”

Archival Sound Recording Maps at the British Library

LarryC — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:44:52 -0800

Mapping sound at the British Library. The British Library has organized several of its archival sound collections on Google Maps. The results include Accents and Dialects, wildlife and soundscape recordings from Britain, music from India and Uganda, and a whole mess of noisy frogs. You can read more about the Archival Sound Recording Project here or on the project blog. This post comes via the JISC Digitisation blog.

Historical Popular Vote Maps

interrobang — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:42:56 -0800

Electoral maps, going all the way back to the beginning.

Moving maps of American elections

imposster — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:04:58 -0800

'Cinematic maps' of American elections a project from the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond Video overview and short article from the Chronicle of Higher Education ('Cinematic' apparently means squished into little Flash videos. Some of the maps don't really benefit from animation (and I can't get the Interactive Map to load), but the analysis section provides some good commentary and by golly there's a bunch of maps to look at. Too bad they don't yet have the maps for this year's election. Warning: video)

National Geographic Map of the Day

Mitheral — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:57:20 -0800

National Geographic Map of the Day. Previously featuring maps that run the gamut from automotive discovery and exploration; through literary, witchhunts and imaginary; to historical and Olympic.

I have a boot in my eye! And I am shaped like a boot! To boot!

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:39:04 -0800

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.

The Map-Happy Chaplain

Rykey — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:15:08 -0800

John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg emigrated from Germany to the United States, where he was eventually a Chaplain in the American Civil War. He also really liked maps; in the course of traveling over his lifetime, he collected hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 16th century. [Most maps in Latin]

Interactive 18th century Rome

peacay — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:21:59 -0800

Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome is a rich and innovative geographic database that projects Vasi's 18th century engravings of Roman architecture onto the contemporary map of Giambattista Nolli [previously] with supplementary modern satellite, photographic and mapping overlays together with copious background detail. The work was undertaken by researchers at the University of Oregon (announcement) [via]

Inflicting a historical atlas on the world

Kattullus — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:14:40 -0800

Physicist Howard Wiseman has a hobby, history. On his website he has three history subsites, filled with lots of information: 1) Ruin and Conquest of Britain 2) 18 Centuries of Roman Empire 3) Twenty Centuries of "British" "Empires". Especially informative are his many maps. As he says himself: "Drawing historical maps of all sorts has been a hobby of mine since my mid teens. Now I can do it digitally, and inflict it upon the world!"

Civil War and/or Aerial Reconnaissance Nerds Only

marxchivist — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:43:34 -0800

The of Battlefields and Bibliophiles blog has a fun quiz. Check your knowledge of American Civil War battlefields by guessing which battleground is featured in the Google Earth images. Answers here. I think I know more than the average doofus about this sort of thing, but the only ones I got right were #1, 3 and 4. I got close on number 6. The same blog featured a Hilarious! post on Black Confederates last month. Also, I recently ran across this thoughtful Civil War blog, done by a sixteen year-old girl.

The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome

mediareport — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:29:39 -0800

The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae A collection of over 900 zoomable print engravings, organized around the work of Antonio Lafreri and other Italian publishers, whose documentation of Roman ruins and statues helped fuel the Renaissance. The itineraries are a good place to start for detailed discussion, or just browse away. [via the wonderful Bouphonia]

Hell's Gate and Beyond

Miko — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:00:40 -0800

Maritime New York

Mapping Canada

St Urbain's Horseman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:22:05 -0800

Canada at scale: Exploration, colonization and development. And a pop-up menu. Go, eh!

World history, the big story

nickyskye — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 22:01:40 -0800

Macrohistory. Prehistory to yesterday. This site describes humanity from prehistory to the 21st century - stories about ideas and events. Maps. Timelines index. Country profiles.

Historic maps and photos of Africa

Rumple — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:26:14 -0800

Northwestern University hosts a fine collection of historic East African photographs, viewable as sample sets or in their original photo-albums (requires flash). But the real prize is their wonderful collection of 113 historic maps of Africa, which are zoomable to incredible detail, also 1, 2, 3. via

I think I can see my house from here...

oneirodynia — Tue, 29 May 2007 22:19:36 -0800

Trulia Hindsight merges real estate data showing the year properties were built with animated maps (US Only). Search for your town by name; here's mine.

The Book of Curiosities

peacay — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:21:19 -0800

For anyone with even a passing interest in Islamic history or cartography, 'The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes' site at Oxford University's Bodleian Library will provide a thoroughly interesting timesink. This recently discovered 13th/14th century copy of an 11th century Egyptian manuscript was partly based on Ptolemy and includes the oldest rectangular map of the world...not to mention the famed human-bearing Waq-Waq tree. [via]

Antique Celestial Maps

Gator — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:40:30 -0800

The U.S. Naval Observatory Library features high-res scans of images from antique books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Wallpapers, ahoy!

Yeah Shanghai!

banishedimmortal — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 11:37:37 -0800

Old photos of Shanghai from Virtual Shanghai is one of the best collections of old Shanghai photos (over 2000) I've found on the web, and it has a nice map collection too. Tales of Old Shanghai has a lot of great stuff, especially primary texts. Sinomania has a pretty eclectic collection of photos. Some of my favorites so far.

The Salisbury Project

plep — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 06:40:15 -0800

The Salisbury Project. Images, maps and essays about the cathedral and town.

The map of Madaba

dhruva — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 20:17:20 -0800

The map of Madaba: The discovery in a sixth century church, and the publication of the mosaic Map of the biblical lands in 1896/7, brought Madaba, at the time a small dusty village in Jordan, to international fame.

Who can invent for us a cartography of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires? - Hakim Bey

absalom — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 17:51:57 -0800

Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it wasn't always so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.

How things have changed. (Yours now, $110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of two planets and one moon (with a second in the works). Actually, we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.

Maybe Not.

Civil War Maps

kirkaracha — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:00:24 -0800

Civil War Maps The Library of Congress just published an online collection of approximately 2,240 Civil War maps, with information about the collection and a History of Mapping the Civil War.