Mithridates VI of Pontus (134–63 b.c. )

Mithridates was Rome’s most dangerous foreign enemy in the 1st century b.c. He arranged for the massacre of perhaps more than a hundred thou...

Swansong

The swan has an advantage over humans in what really matters, for it knows when the end of its life is imminent. Moreover, in bearing death’...

CARTOGRAPHY Part I

Waldseem üller’s 1507 Map of the World. This map by the German cartographer Martin Waldseem üller (ca. 1470–ca. 1522) is accompanied by text...

CARTOGRAPHY Part II

Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci, 1510. To what degree Christopher Columbus’s (1451–1506) landfall of October 12, 1492, on an island in the Baha...

CARTOGRAPHY Part III

Quadrant. Simple quadrants allowed early cartographers, as well as sailors and explorers, to accurately measure altitude and determine latit...

CARTOGRAPHY Part IV

De Bry’s Map of the New World. This early map of North and South America was rendered in 1596 by the Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry (ca. 15...

CARTOGRAPHY IN THE COLONIAL AMERICAS

Ortelius’s Map of the New World. This early map of North and South America, by the Flemish mapmaker Abraham Ortelius, was first published in...

Ten of the greatest: Maps that changed the world

From the USSR's Be On Guard! map in 1921 to Google Earth, a new exhibition at the British Library charts the extraordinary documents tha...

Brendan the Navigator (c. 484–577 c.e.) explorer and church leader

St Brendan and the whale from a 15th century manuscript For centuries the legend of an Irish monk named Brendan (also called Brenainn, Bra...

Tigerfish (Hydrocynus forskalii)

After seeing these pictures... The Tigerfish (Hydrocynus forskalii) need no introduction with this species being the southernmost and seco...