[cogitator]

I always found maps interesting ever since I was a kid. In the home I grew up in, one wall of one room actually had a map of the world -- with 1950s era country names and boundaries! Places like the "Belgian Congo", "Trans-Jordan" and "Rhodesia", that are now only historical. It's interesting to watch the changes.

[Thrusher]

What about Jesusland? Is Jesusland on the new atlas? Taxachusetts? The People's Republic of Kalifornication?

[beavus]

It's interesting to watch the changes.

I agree. My grandfather had a globe that showed N & S Vietnam, and other anachronisms. It is particularly interesting to go back and learn which European powers held hegemony over various nations in the Carribean, Africa, Middle East, and SE Asia. It not only explains which Euro languages are spoken, but shows where their political traditions came from.

[cloud8]

Our family National Geographic Atlas is the 7th Edition, but it doesn't give the year of publication (avoiding the date somehow delays obsolescence?) It's from the 90s because it shows the XSSR countries. Maybe I'm old fashioned but giving measurements in the metric system drives me *nuts* And what's this with "Kolkata?" An American atlas should use feet and miles and put faddish place names in an appendix. A real test for the new edition's PCness...what does it call the West Bank in Israel?

[Verginius Rufus]

I have an atlas published in 1920 that has a lot of names that have since disappeared from use--Courland (later part of Latvia), Abyssinia, Ango-Egyptian Sudan, Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), Belgian Kongo, Nyasaland Prot. (now Malawi), Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Hejaz, Asir, Hasa, Chosen (Korea), Formosa.

In the Western Hemisphere the most notable boundary changes since then are the Peru-Ecuador border, the Paraguay-Bolivia border, and the Labrador-Quebec border (Newfoundland, including Labrador, was not yet a part of Canada; the mainland part of Newfoundland was a narrow strip of land).