[Red Badger]

PinGGG!...................

1606? The map looks very much close to the actual world............

[BenLurkin]

“These days, climate scientists are looking hard at Arctic maps” desperately searching for ways to keep the scam going.

[dp0622]

Boy I remember my first trip there.

I wouldn’t recommend it.

[texanyankee]

Besides the North Pole, there is just as much mystery if not more of the ancient maps of Antarctica.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Pygmies do indeed live at the North Pole but in modern times they are known as Santa’s elves.

[HombreSecreto]

Already been mapped...

[Beowulf9]

I wonder if the idea of Pygmies in the North Pole inspired Baum when he wrote the Wizard of Oz books.

[2nd Amendment]

I heard they found a fat bearded guy in a red suit living with elves!

[Beowulf9]

Just read the Wizard of Oz was written in 1900 and they went to the North Pole in 1909. Maybe Baum inspired the mapmakers for the North Pole!

[bIlluminati]

The 1909 travelers claimed to have reached the North Pole, but it seems unlikely. Very uneven terrain, open sea in several places, and the claimed speed was 30% faster than later explorers managed, up until they hit open sea and were forced to return to base.

[edwinland]

Great article. Thanks for all you do to keep FR interesting. I’ve read a lot of your posts this year. Merry Christmas and keep it going in 2025!

[MikelTackNailer]

On the Donald says it is an "absolute necessity" the US purchases Greenland thread I saw a minimap at post #27 showing:

1.North Pole

2.North Magnetic Pole, and

3.Pole of Inaccessibility.

Which is an entirely new one on me. Turns out to just be the remotest point from anything else just a few hundred miles from the others.

But learned the ANT-Arctic version of this point sports a statue of Vladimir Lenin courtesy of the old USSR.

The perfect polyp on the sphincter of the world.

[Moltke]

In order to make his map useful for navigation, though, Mercator had to sacrifice accuracy in other areas—specifically, he had to stretch out the top and bottom parts of his map, making the lands and seas in the far North and South appear disproportionately larger than those nearer the equator. (This is also why so many people think Africa is the same size as Greenland, when it is really about 14 times bigger—the Mercator projection is still very common in schools.)

Another thing I would really recommend is to teach children early (and adults who never had a clue) about the real scales of our own solar system. Mostly the planets are shown close together and close to the sun. Like here:

The reality of the sizes and especially the vast distances of empty space is stunning (and humbling, IMO).

https://solartoscale.com/ (vertical)

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/ (horizontal)

Merry Christmas!