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The Geography Portal

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Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê 'Earth' and gráphō 'write') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."

Origins of many of the concepts in geography can be traced to Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who may have coined the term "geographia" (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC). The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as the title of a book by Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 AD). This work created the so-called "Ptolemaic tradition" of geography, which included "Ptolemaic cartographic theory." However, the concepts of geography (such as cartography) date back to the earliest attempts to understand the world spatially, with the earliest example of an attempted world map dating to the 9th century BCE in ancient Babylon. The history of geography as a discipline spans cultures and millennia, being independently developed by multiple groups, and cross-pollinated by trade between these groups. The core concepts of geography consistent between all approaches are a focus on space, place, time, and scale.

Today, geography is an extremely broad discipline with multiple approaches and modalities. There have been multiple attempts to organize the discipline, including the four traditions of geography, and into branches. Techniques employed can generally be broken down into quantitative and qualitative approaches, with many studies taking mixed-methods approaches. Common techniques include cartography, remote sensing, interviews, and surveying. (Full article...)

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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Image 1

Willow Lake (located in the Big Butte Creek watershed), with Mount McLoughlin in the background

Big Butte Creek is a 12-mile-long (19 km) tributary of the Rogue River in the U.S. state of Oregon. It drains approximately 245 square miles (635 km²) of Jackson County. Its two forks, the North Fork and the South Fork, both begin high in the Cascade Range near Mount McLoughlin. Flowing predominantly west, they meet near the city of Butte Falls. The main stem flows generally northwest until it empties into the Rogue Falls was incorporated in 1911, and remains the only incorporated town within the watershed's boundaries.

Big Butte Creek's watershed was originally settled over 8,000 years ago by the Klamath, Upper Umpqua, and Takelma tribes of Native Americans. In the Rogue River Wars of the 1850s, most of the Native Americans were either killed or forced onto Indian reservations. The first non-indigenous settlers arrived in the 1860s, naming the creek after Snowy Butte, an early name for Mount McLoughlin. In the late 19th century, the watershed was primarily used for agriculture and logging. The small city of Butte Falls was incorporated in 1911, and remains the only incorporated town within the watershed's boundaries. (Full article...)
Image 2

Location in Allerdale

Keswick (/ˈkɛzɪk/ KEZ-ik) is a market town and civil parish in the Cumberland unitary authority area of Cumbria, England. Historically, until 1974, it was part of the county of Cumberland. It lies within the Lake District National Park, Keswick is just north of Derwentwater and is four miles (six kilometres) from Bassenthwaite Lake. The parish had a population of 5,243 at the 2011 census.

There is evidence of prehistoric occupation of the area, but the first recorded mention of the town dates from the 13th century, when Edward I of England granted a charter for Keswick's market, which has maintained a continuous 700-year existence. The town was an important mining area, and from the 18th century has been known as a holiday centre; tourism has been its principal industry for more than 150 years. Its features include the Moot Hall; a modern theatre, the Theatre by the Lake; one of Britain's oldest surviving cinemas, the Alhambra; and the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in the town's largest open space, Fitz Park. Among the town's annual events is the Keswick Convention, an Evangelical gathering attracting visitors from many countries. (Full article...)
Image 3

Ficus obliqua, Milton, New South Wales

Ficus obliqua, commonly known as the small-leaved fig, is a tree in the family Moraceae, native to eastern Australia, New Guinea, eastern Indonesia to Sulawesi and islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Previously known for many years as Ficus eugenioides, it is a banyan of the genus Ficus, which contains around 750 species worldwide in warm climates, including the edible fig (Ficus carica). Beginning life as a seedling, which grows on other plants (epiphyte) or on rocks (lithophyte), F. obliqua can grow to 60 m (200 ft) high and nearly as wide with a pale grey buttressed trunk, and glossy green leaves.

The small round yellow fruit ripen and turn red at any time of year, although ripening peaks in autumn and winter (April to July). Known as a syconium, the fruit is an inverted inflorescence with the flowers lining an internal cavity. Ficus obliqua is pollinated by two species of fig wasp—Pleistodontes greenwoodi and P. xanthocephalus. Many species of bird, including pigeons, parrots and various passerines, eat the fruit. The range is along the east coast from Queensland, through New South Wales in rainforest, savanna woodland, sclerophyll forest and gallery forest. It is used as a shade tree in parks and public spaces, and is well-suited for use as an indoor plant or in bonsai. All parts of the tree have been used in traditional medicine in Fiji. (Full article...)
Image 4
Michael was born near Apex, Iqaluit.

Simonie Michael (Inuktitut: ᓴᐃᒨᓂ ᒪᐃᑯᓪ; first name also spelled Simonee, alternative surnames Michel or E7-551; March 2, 1933 – November 15, 2008) was a Canadian politician from the eastern Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) who was the first Inuk elected to a legislature in Canada. Before becoming involved in politics, Michael worked as a carpenter and business owner, and was one of very few translators between Inuktitut and English. He became a prominent member of the Inuit co-operative housing movement and a community activist in Iqaluit, and was appointed to a series of governing bodies, including the precursor to the Iqaluit City Council.

After becoming the first elected Inuk member of the Northwest Territories Legislative Council, in 1966, Michael worked on infrastructural and public health initiatives. He is credited with bringing public attention to the dehumanizing effects of the disc number system that was used in place of surnames for Inuit, and with prompting the government to authorise Project Surname to replace the numbers with names. (Full article...)
Image 5

Canberra viewed from Mount Ainslie

Canberra (/ˈkænbərə/ KAN-bər-ə) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest Australian city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory at the northern tip of the Australian Alps, the country's highest mountain range. Canberra's estimated population was 466,566.

The area chosen for the capital had been inhabited by Aboriginal Australians for up to 21,000 years, by groups including the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri. European settlement commenced in the first half of the 19th century, as evidenced by surviving landmarks such as St John's Anglican Church and Blundells Cottage. On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies of Australia was achieved. Following a long dispute over whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the national capital, a compromise was reached: the new capital would be built in New South Wales, so long as it was at least 100 mi (160 km) from Sydney. The capital city was founded and formally named as Canberra in 1913. A plan by the American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected after an international design contest, and construction commenced in 1913. Unusual among Australian cities, it is an entirely planned city. The Griffins' plan featured geometric motifs and was centred on axes aligned with significant topographical landmarks such as Black Mountain, Mount Ainslie, Capital Hill and City Hill. Canberra's mountainous location makes it the only mainland Australian city where snow-capped mountains can be seen in winter, although snow in the city itself is uncommon. (Full article...)
Image 6

Sand dunes in Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley.

The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. (Full article...)
Image 7

Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's second-largest country by total area, with the world's longest coastline. Its border with the United States is the world's longest international land border. The country is characterized by a wide range of both meteorologic and geological regions. It is a sparsely inhabited country of 40 million people, the vast majority residing south of the 55th parallel in urban areas. Canada's capital is Ottawa and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Indigenous peoples have continuously inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Statute of Westminster, 1931, and culminating in the Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. (Full article...)
Image 8

Columbia River from Rowena Crest with Interstate 84 on the right

The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: Wimahl or Wimal; Sahaptin: Nch’i-Wàna or Nchi wana; Sinixt dialect swah'netk'qhu) is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river forms in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven states of the United States and one Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any river entering the Pacific outside of Asia, and the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world.

The Columbia and its tributaries have been central to the region's culture and economy for thousands of years. They have been used for transportation since ancient times, linking the region's many cultural groups. The river system hosts many species of anadromous fish, which migrate between freshwater habitats and the saline waters of the Pacific Ocean. These fish—especially the salmon species—provided the core subsistence for native peoples. (Full article...)
Image 9

Waves breaking on the Doom Bar at high water

The Doom Bar (previously known as Dunbar sands, Dune-bar, and similar names) is a sandbar at the mouth of the estuary of the River Camel, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean on the north coast of Cornwall, England. Like two other permanent sandbanks further up the estuary, the Doom Bar is composed mainly of marine sand that is continually being carried up from the seabed. More than 60 percent of the sand is derived from marine shells, making it an important source of agricultural lime, which has been collected for hundreds of years; an estimated 10 million tons of sand or more has been removed from the estuary since the early nineteenth century, mainly by dredging.

The estuary mouth, exposed to the Atlantic Ocean, is a highly dynamic environment, and the sands have been prone to dramatic shifts during storms. According to tradition, the Doom Bar formed in the reign of Henry VIII, damaging the prosperity of the port of Padstow a mile up the estuary. (Full article...)
Image 10

View of Mount Berlin from the surrounding ice sheet

Mount Berlin is a glacier-covered volcano in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the Amundsen Sea. It is a roughly 20-kilometre-wide (12 mi) mountain with parasitic vents that consists of two coalesced volcanoes: Berlin proper with the 2-kilometre-wide (1.2 mi) Berlin Crater and Merrem Peak with a 2.5-by-1-kilometre-wide (1.55 mi × 0.62 mi) crater, 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) away from Berlin. The summit of the volcano is 3,478 metres (11,411 ft) above sea level. It has a volume of 200 cubic kilometres (48 cu mi) and rises from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It is part of the Marie Byrd Land Volcanic Province. Trachyte is the dominant volcanic rock and occurs in the form of lava flows and pyroclastic rocks.

The volcano began erupting during the Pliocene and was active into the late Pleistocene and the Holocene. Several tephra layers encountered in ice cores all over Antarctica – but in particular at Mount Moulton – have been linked to Mount Berlin, which is the most important source of such tephras in the region. The tephra layers were formed by explosive eruptions that generated high eruption columns. Presently, fumarolic activity occurs at Mount Berlin and forms ice towers from freezing steam. (Full article...)
Image 11
Surface-supplied divers riding a stage to the underwater workplace

Underwater diving, as a human activity, is the practice of descending below the water's surface to interact with the environment. It is also often referred to as diving, an ambiguous term with several possible meanings, depending on context.
Immersion in water and exposure to high ambient pressure have physiological effects that limit the depths and duration possible in ambient pressure diving. Humans are not physiologically and anatomically well-adapted to the environmental conditions of diving, and various equipment has been developed to extend the depth and duration of human dives, and allow different types of work to be done.

In ambient pressure diving, the diver is directly exposed to the pressure of the surrounding water. The ambient pressure diver may dive on breath-hold (freediving) or use breathing apparatus for scuba diving or surface-supplied diving, and the saturation diving technique reduces the risk of decompression sickness (DCS) after long-duration deep dives. Atmospheric diving suits (ADS) may be used to isolate the diver from high ambient pressure. Crewed submersibles can extend depth range to full ocean depth, and remotely controlled or robotic machines can reduce risk to humans. (Full article...)
Image 12
Image map of Kitchen Creek and its waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park, as well as other prominent features. Each label is linked to an article or image. Click here for larger map.

There are 24 named waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania along Kitchen Creek as it flows in three steep, narrow valleys, or glens. They range in height from 9 feet (2.7 m) to the 94-foot (29 m) Ganoga Falls. Ricketts Glen State Park is named for R. Bruce Ricketts, a colonel in the American Civil War who owned over 80,000 acres (32,000 hectares) in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but spared the old-growth forests in the glens from clearcutting. The park, which opened in 1944, is administered by the Bureau of State Parks of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). Nearly all of the waterfalls are visible from the Falls Trail, which Ricketts had built from 1889 to 1893 and which the state park rebuilt in the 1940s and late 1990s. The Falls Trail has been called "the most magnificent hike in the state" and one of "the top hikes in the East". (Full article...)
Image 13

Maritana Avenue, one of only two paved roads in Elcor, looking south toward Manilla Street, 1980

Elcor is a ghost town, or more properly, an extinct town, in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1897 and 1956. It was built on the Mesabi Iron Range near the city of Gilbert in St. Louis County. Elcor was its own unincorporated community before it was abandoned and was never a neighborhood proper of the city of Gilbert. Not rating a figure in the national census, the people of Elcor were only generally considered to be citizens of Gilbert. The area where Elcor was located was annexed by Gilbert when its existing city boundaries were expanded after 1969.

In November 1890, the seven Merritt brothers discovered ore near Mountain Iron, triggering an unparalleled iron rush to the Mesabi Range. The Elba mine was opened in 1897, and the town was platted under the direction of Don H. Bacon, president of the Minnesota Iron Company. A second nearby mine, the Corsica, was opened in 1901. The community was first called "Elba" after the name of the first underground mine (the name "Elcor" was formed later by combining the first syllables of each mine's name). The Elba and Corsica mines were both leased by Pickands Mather and Company after the formation of the United States Steel Corporation. An influx of people of many ethnicities and many nations followed, and Elcor became a microcosm of U.S. immigration, mirroring the cultural assimilation of the time. At its peak around 1920, Elcor had two churches, a post office, a general store, a primary school, a railroad station, and its own law enforcement, and housed a population of nearly 1,000. (Full article...)
Image 14

The three current Northern England statistical regions combined shown within England. Other definitions of the North vary and have changed over time.

Northern England, also known as the North of England, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It partly corresponds to the former borders of Anglian Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik and the Brythontic Celtic Hen Ogledd kingdoms.

The North is a grouping of three statistical regions: the North East, the North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber. These had a combined population of 14.9 million at the 2011 census, an area of 37,331 km² (14,414 square miles) and 17 cities. (Full article...)
Image 15

Navenby village from the Viking Way

Navenby /ˈneɪvənbi/ is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. Lying 8 miles (13 km) south from Lincoln and 9 miles (14 km) north-northwest from Sleaford, Navenby had a population of 2,128 in the 2011 census and in March 2011, it was named as the 'Best Value Village' in England following a national survey.

A Bronze Age cemetery and the remains of an Iron Age settlement have been discovered in the village. Historians also believe Navenby was a significant staging point on the Roman Ermine Street, as the Romans are reported to have maintained a small base or garrison in the village. Navenby became a market town after receiving a charter from Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. The charter was later renewed by William Rufus, Edward III and Richard II. When the market fell into disuse in the early 19th century, Navenby returned to being a village. (Full article...)

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Vital article

Vital articles to understand Geography.

The size of Africa compared to the other continents

Africa is the world's second largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km² (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area. With 1.4 billion people0 as of 2021, it accounts for about 18% of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, lack of democracy, tribalism, corruption, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context. (Full article...)

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Selected pictures

Image 1
Olmec heartland
Map: Madman2001
A map of the Olmec heartland, the southern portion of Mexico's Gulf Coast region between the Tuxtla mountains and the Olmec archaeological site of La Venta. It is considered the heartland of the Olmec culture, which was widespread over Mesoamerica from 1400 BCE until roughly 400 BCE.

On this map, yellow dots represent ancient habitation sites, including San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Red dots represent isolated artifact finds unassociated with any ancient town or village, such as the Las Limas Monument 1, the San Martín Pajapan Monument 1, and "The Wrestler".
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Image 2
Yellowstone National Park
Map credit: Heinrich C. Berann
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located mostly in Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular landmarks. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. The park is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

This picture is a stylized panoramic map of Yellowstone National Park as viewed from the northeast, created in 1991 by Austrian painter and cartographer Heinrich C. Berann for the National Park Service. Yellowstone Lake and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone are in the center, while Old Faithful is visible on the right, next to a brown building representing the Old Faithful Inn. Jackson Lake and the peaks of the Teton Range are depicted in the background.
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Image 3
Aitoff projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Aitoff projection is a modified azimuthal map projection first proposed by David A. Aitoff in 1889. Based on the equatorial form of the azimuthal equidistant projection, Aitoff halved longitudes from the central meridian, projected by the azimuthal equidistant, and then stretched the result horizontally into a 2:1 ellipse.
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Image 4
Geocentric model
Photo credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar
Illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric model of the Universe (the theory that the Earth is the center of the universe) by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho. Taken from his treatise Cosmographia, made in Paris, 1568. Notice the distances of the bodies to the centre of the Earth (left) and the times of revolution, in years (right).
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Image 5
Dymaxion map
Image: Chris Rywalt
An animation showing the unfolding of a Dymaxion map, a projection of a world map onto the surface of a polyhedron (in this case, an icosahedron) and then flattened to form a two-dimensional map which retains most of the relative proportional integrity of the globe map. This type of map was invented by Buckminster Fuller and is one of several of his inventions to use the name Dymaxion.
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Image 6
Peirce quincuncial projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Peirce quincuncial projection is a conformal map projection developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in 1879, while he was working at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. In the normal aspect Peirce's projection presents the Northern Hemisphere in a square; the Southern Hemisphere is split into four 90°–45°–45° triangles surrounding it so that the whole map forms a larger square.
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Image 7
North Cascades National Park
Map credit: Heinrich C. Berann
North Cascades National Park is an American national park in the state of Washington. At more than 500,000 acres (200,000 ha), North Cascades National Park is the largest of the three National Park Service units that comprise the North Cascades National Park Complex. North Cascades National Park consists of a northern and southern section, bisected by the Skagit River that flows through Ross Lake National Recreation Area. Lake Chelan National Recreation Area lies on the southern border of the south unit of the park. In addition to the two national recreation areas, other protected lands including several national forests and wilderness areas, as well as Canadian provincial parks in British Columbia, nearly surround the park. North Cascades National Park features the rugged mountain peaks of the North Cascades Range, the most expansive glacial system in the contiguous United States, the headwaters of numerous waterways, and vast forests with the highest degree of flora biodiversity of any American national park.

This picture is a panoramic map of North Cascades National Park, as viewed from the east, created in 1987 by Austrian painter and cartographer Heinrich C. Berann for the National Park Service.
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Image 8
Gall–Peters projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Gall–Peters projection, named after James Gall and Arno Peters, is a specialization of a configurable equal-area map projection known as the cylindrical equal-area projection. It achieved considerable notoriety in the late 20th century as the centerpiece of a controversy surrounding the political implications of map design; Peters promoted it as a more faithful representation than the Mercator projection, which inflates the sizes of regions farther from the equator and thus makes the (mostly technologically underdeveloped) equatorial countries appear smaller and therefore, according to Peters, less significant.
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Image 9
Van der Grinten projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The van der Grinten projection is a compromise map projection that is neither equal-area nor conformal. It projects the entire Earth into a circle, though the polar regions are subject to extreme distortion. The projection was the first of four proposed by Alphons J. van der Grinten in 1904, and, unlike perspective projections, is an arbitrary geometric construction on the plane. It was adopted as the National Geographic Society's reference map of the world from 1922 until 1988.
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Image 10
Alexander von Humboldt
Map: William C. Woodbridge; Restoration: Jujutacular and Lise Broer
An isothermal map of the world, based on the research of Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist whose work laid the foundation for the sciences of physical geography and meteorology, among other things. By delineating "isothermal lines", he simultaneously suggested the idea and devised the means of comparing the climatic conditions of various countries.
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Image 11
Island of California
Map: Johannes Vingboons; Restoration: Lise Broer
A c. 1650 map showing the Island of California, a long-held European misconception, dating from the 16th century, that California was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island separated from the continent by a strait now known instead as the Gulf of California. The belief persisted until the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774–76.
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Image 12
Mollweide projection
Map: Strebe, using Geocart
The Mollweide projection is an equal-area, pseudocylindrical map projection generally used for global maps of the world or night sky. The projection was first published by mathematician and astronomer Karl Mollweide of Leipzig in 1805 but reinvented and popularized in 1857 by Jacques Babinet. The projection trades accuracy of angle and shape for accuracy of proportions in area, and as such is used where that property is needed, such as maps depicting global distributions.
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Image 13
South America
Photo: Blue Marble by Reto Stockli, NASA/GSFC
A composite relief satellite image of South America, the fourth-largest continent. South America occupies the southern portion of the landmass in the Western Hemisphere. The continent is generally delimited on the northwest by the Darién watershed along the Colombia–Panama border. Almost all of mainland South America sits on the South American Plate, as do nearby outlying islands.
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Image 14
Sahara
Image credit: NASA
A satellite image of the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert and second largest desert after Antarctica at over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), almost as large as the United States. The Sahara is located in Northern Africa and is 2.5 million years old.
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Image 15
Nautical chart
Map credit: Fernão Vaz Dourado
A pre-Mercator nautical chart of West Africa from 1571, by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado. It is done using the so-called "plane chart model", where observed latitudes and magnetic directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat.
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Featured biography

Featured biography articles in geography

Lord Ashfield by Hugh Cecil, c. 1920

Albert Henry Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield, TD, PC (8 August 1874 – 4 November 1948), born Albert Henry Knattriess, was a British-American businessman who was managing director, then chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) from 1910 to 1933 and chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) from 1933 to 1947.

Although born in Britain, his early career was in the United States, where at a young age, he held senior positions in the developing tramway systems of Detroit and New Jersey. In 1898, he served in the United States Navy during the short Spanish–American War. (Full article...)

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Pierre Rossier Zhang Heng Edward Wright (mathematician) Emery Molyneux Daniel Boone Caspar David Friedrich Robert Hues Alfred Russel Wallace Mary Anning Edward Drinker Cope Georg Forster David A. Johnston Richard Hakluyt James Tod Shen Kuo Fridtjof Nansen Clements Markham