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!).
posted by Effigy2000 on Jun 14, 2009 - 24 comments

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]
posted by marxchivist on Jun 12, 2009 - 5 comments

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. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jun 4, 2009 - 16 comments

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. [more inside]
posted by LarryC on May 14, 2009 - 8 comments

Electoral maps, going all the way back to the beginning.
posted by interrobang on Oct 27, 2008 - 36 comments

'Cinematic maps' of American elections a project from the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond [more inside]
posted by imposster on Aug 25, 2008 - 5 comments

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.
posted by Mitheral on Aug 15, 2008 - 9 comments

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 6, 2008 - 25 comments

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]
posted by Rykey on Jul 26, 2008 - 6 comments

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]
posted by peacay on Jun 11, 2008 - 3 comments

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!"
posted by Kattullus on Feb 19, 2008 - 18 comments

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. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Feb 6, 2008 - 5 comments

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]
posted by mediareport on Dec 10, 2007 - 8 comments

Maritime New York
posted by Miko on Dec 6, 2007 - 5 comments

Canada at scale: Exploration, colonization and development. And a pop-up menu. Go, eh!
posted by St Urbain's Horseman on Sep 25, 2007 - 30 comments

Macrohistory. Prehistory to yesterday. This site describes humanity from prehistory to the 21st century - stories about ideas and events. Maps. Timelines index. Country profiles.
posted by nickyskye on Jul 24, 2007 - 14 comments

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
posted by Rumple on Jun 11, 2007 - 11 comments

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.
posted by oneirodynia on May 29, 2007 - 10 comments

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]
posted by peacay on Apr 5, 2007 - 7 comments

The U.S. Naval Observatory Library features high-res scans of images from antique books dealing with astronomy and navigation. Wallpapers, ahoy!
posted by Gator on Jul 13, 2006 - 18 comments

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.
posted by banishedimmortal on Apr 3, 2006 - 7 comments

The Salisbury Project. Images, maps and essays about the cathedral and town.
posted by plep on Aug 23, 2005 - 4 comments

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.
posted by dhruva on Feb 20, 2005 - 4 comments

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.
posted by absalom on Jan 27, 2005 - 17 comments

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.
posted by kirkaracha on Jan 11, 2005 - 6 comments

The Rise and Fall of the Black Voter is a remarkable sequence of maps graphically describing the realignment of voting patterns in the U.S. during the past century (read this for a bit more context). It is an excellent companion to the purple maps of the most recent election, and a nice antidote to simplistic comparisons of pre-Civil War and recent electoral college maps. Republicans can bask in the glow of their successful "Southern Strategy," while Democrats can take heart that change, while often slow, is still possible.
posted by googly on Dec 15, 2004 - 7 comments

The History of Maps from the the oldest map of the world to prehistoric globalization to early modern worlds to nautical charts. Myths and facts.
posted by cmonkey on Dec 3, 2004 - 13 comments

Historic cities - images and maps. [via monkeyfilter]

Also - historic maps of the UK, and many more. Map overload may occur.

posted by jb on Sep 29, 2004 - 8 comments

Piri Reis Map I am a sucker for those books that hypothesize that Earth was visited by extra-terrestrials in the distant pass. One artifact that is brought up in nearly all of them is The Piri Reis Map, a document that seems to be a map includes parts of the world (such as Antarctica's ice-covered mountains) that were thought to be very recent discoveries. But, are they a hoax?
posted by synecdoche on Apr 21, 2004 - 14 comments

Mapping History: The Darkwing Atlas Project "The Project has been designed to provide interactive and animated representations of fundamental historical problems and/or illustrations of historical events, developments, and dynamics." All sorts of simple historical animated and static maps as well as photos and images from Greek and Phoenician expansions, to the spread of Slavery in the American South 1790-1860 and christian graffiti from the Roman catacombs.
posted by talos on Dec 4, 2003 - 6 comments

The pictures that reveal UK's hidden history For the first time the complex and sometimes harrowing history of immigration to the UK is being told, through rarely seen photographs, official documents, maps and personal papers. And it's all online.
posted by turbanhead on Jul 30, 2003 - 5 comments

The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World provides beautiful detailed topographical maps of the ancient world. A mammoth undertaking in production over 12 years with 160 scholars and cartographers (with help from MapQuest) and estimated to cost over $5 million it is the largest and most accurate Ancient World Atlas ever. Composed of 99 maps (examples) the Atlas is easily available to the layperson. "If you're gripped by Hannibal and want to sort out which way you think he went through the Alps, you'll have enough of a clear landscape to do it. If you want to follow St. Paul around the eastern Mediterranean, you can."
posted by stbalbach on Jul 16, 2003 - 15 comments

Maps of Liberia , 1830-1879. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa. Here's a brief history of the American Colonization Society, with images of places, currency, letters etc.
The Yekepa Memory Project includes materials about Yekepa, Liberia, such as postcards and stamps.
Related :- Liberia, June 1999 photoessay.
Also of interest :- a collection of photos of neighbouring Guinea, 1905.
posted by plep on Jun 13, 2003 - 4 comments

A bunch of very beautiful Old Japanese Maps has been put online. Java application Insight(tm) required to view and includes a nifty GIS application to overlay old maps on current maps with 3-D animated fly-throughs. State of the art in online map presentation "The digital images are even better than the originals because you can amplify them, rotate them to look at them from different angles," Mr. Zhou said. "In practical terms, this is a better way of using the material than actually coming here to see the pieces."
posted by stbalbach on Apr 13, 2003 - 5 comments

Maps. Recent events have sent me all over bookstores and the web to look at and learn from maps. This is the best, and one of the least known sites. For current events, try the Middle East and Afghanistan sections, but don't miss the incredibel Historical maps collection.
posted by geronimo_rex on Oct 4, 2001 - 7 comments

Inspired amateur historian. This self described no one in particular with pretty slim credentials synthesizes history with clear and useful maps and analysis. Whatever its shortcomings, this is the kind of website that reminds me why I love the Internet.
posted by geronimo_rex on Jun 5, 2001 - 16 comments

The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Map the World) is a remarkably beautiful and rare glimpse into the medieval view the world. It is the largest map its kind (54 x 64 inches) to have survived and dates from around 1295. It still resides at Hereford Cathedral in England just as it has done for the last 700 years.

The map depicts the world as a flat disk with east at the top. It shows all the features the then known world including Africa, India and China. Paradise is depicted somewhere east India. The Holy Land and its important sites expand to fill the middle the map. Jerusalem is placed at the centre the world.

It is a work of cosmology as much as a cartography. That is, it seeks to explain the world as well as merely depict its features. This was a time when the population was uneducated and provincial. In the Hereford map, people could revel in this vision of the outside world, which taught natural history, classical legends, explained the winds and reinforced their religious beliefs.

Here is a simplified sketch which makes the details and country names easier to identify. Here is the original and a very good written description.
posted by lagado on Oct 30, 2000 - 10 comments