How Old Is Your Globe?

[madaxe_again]

Well, mine has Abyssinia on it, in a nice shade of pink, and a large chunks of inland Africa are just this big old white expanse with some pictures of funky looking lions. Antarctica is made of brass as there's nothing important down there.

It's 1860something, when the last bits of terra incognita were being mopped up. Like to be reminded that only recently there was still wonder and mystery in the world.

[creshal]

When did white spots disappear from maps? Going by my parents' off-hand comments, maps showing Africa and South America still had big white blobs in the 1960s. Eventually they were filled in with satellite maps, but when was that? 1970s? 80s?

[creshal]

> You will need the Flash plug-in to view [the products page].

How Old Is Your Website? :-)

(And the list is missing South Sudan, which gained independence 4 years ago…)

[schoen]

Perhaps not all globes show Kosovo as independent, but it's also missing Kosovo (2008).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Kosovo_declaration_of_ind...

Wikipedia has a great list that could help in dating both other websites with this kind of information and globes. :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_map_changes

[TorKlingberg]

It's rather sparse since 2000. For example South Sudan in 2011 is missing in the list.

[dogma1138]

I got some island in the middle of the med that's called Atlantis on mine can you help me date this globe?

[underwater]

Ceylon caught my eye. It's the former name of Sri Lanka as well as being the name of a cross-platform language that's currently on the homepage.

[briodf]

Brilliant!

>Related: 13 people trying to figure out how old a globe is on Quora https://www.quora.com/How-old-can-this-globe-be

[incanus77]

1948 for mine!

https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/659401447830777856

[dang]

Discussed in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2946430

[VLM]

Some areas are fractally similar on a smaller scale, or even more active than the world on average, think of the Spratly Islands, or the Balkan peninsula.

[marssaxman]

Ha! This is a game I play pretty much every time I see a globe for sale or in someone's house.

[mcguire]

Isn't Burma Myanmar these days?

[TorKlingberg]

From Wikipedia: "Many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use "Burma" because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country."

[maw]

My globe's so old it's flat.