Free Republic

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday endorsed a new world map that represents Africa more accurately in its larger size, a culmination of a recent campaign led by African countries and advocacy groups. Friday’s resolution, which was sponsored by Togo and backed by members of the African Union, was passed with 164 member states voting in favor. Only the US voted against it while six other countries — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine — abstained. The vote encourages governments and institutions around the world to replace the traditional Mercator map, commonly used since the 16th Century, with...

Greenland rarely draws global attention. But as ice melts and great powers inch closer, the world’s largest island has become a strategic prize — one that caught President Donald Trump's eye long before most Americans were paying attention.

It’s not that Africa is shown as being too small on the majority of world maps, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong explains below, it’s how almost every other part of the world has been artificially inflated. If we want someone to blame for this distortion, then we need look no further than the year 1569 when the cartographer Gerardus Mercator devised a solution to the problem of representing a globe on a 2D map’s surface. Mercator’s projection was revolutionary and invaluable for nautical navigation, but in the modern era, is outdated and wildly inaccurate. You can see this for yourself quite...