First anniversary: thank you
A summary of the first year of Cartographer’s Tale, and some news.
Happy New Year!
After two years working on the Milhaud Maps project in Spanish, at Christmas 2024/2025 I decided to start an English version. That’s how A Cartographer’s Tale came to be a year ago, a place where I wanted to talk to you about maps on a weekly basis. Or at least a place to use maps as an excuse to write all kinds of stories.
A year later, more than 1,100 of you are receiving this weekly newsletter, for which I am truly grateful. As I always say, when you do something because you enjoy it, the numbers are not necessarily important, but it is always nice to know that there is someone listening (or reading) on the other side.
As many of you probably know, I also maintain a map catalogue in which, over the course of three years, I have accumulated more than 1,160 maps1. Until a few days ago, the catalogue was only available in Spanish, but since 1 January, you can also check the English version at the following link.
The idea behind the catalogue is to find maps that are of some interest, whether they are old maps, historical maps, propaganda maps, data maps or simply curious maps. For each of the maps, I make sure to give credit to the author, put the year it was originally published, and some information to help interpret the map. This information should help to better understand what the map is trying to convey, whether it is providing data, historical context, or the authors’ intentions.
At the same time as they are published on the website, I have also automated these maps to appear on different social networks with a link to the website. Here is a link if you are interested in viewing the maps on your preferred social media platform: Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit, Instagram, Telegram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Threads2.
I would also like to take this first anniversary as an opportunity to thank some specific individuals who have helped to raise the profile of this project. I know that many of you are receiving this thanks to one of them, but for the rest that don’t know them, please check their work. You will not regret it.
Geoff Gibson, author of Geographic Geoff and this nice YouTube channel.
Steven Feldman, one of the co-founders of Mappery, who also interviewed me on GeoMob3.
M. E. Rothwell, author of Cosmographia
Doug Greenfield, author of Map of the Week
David Redfern, author of A Level of Geography
Prateek Dasgupta, author of Forgotten Footprints
2026 looks promising, there is still a lot I want to write about, and I will continue to do so on a weekly basis. I hope you will continue to read, and please do not hesitate to send me any feedback or comments, they are always welcome. And share with anyone who might be interested!
To finish, here are some of the articles that have been most popular. Or at least some of the most read.
How did North get to the top?
Maps are the mechanism mankind has found to represent the surface of the Earth. As much as some people like to talk about some maps being more correct than others, the truth is that it is nothing more than a convention.
The true size of countries
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how cartographic projections, for purely mathematical reasons, have to distort the Earth's surface to represent it. These distortions can be in angles, shapes, distances or sizes, without being possible to respect all three simultaneously. When the most popular projection ends up being one that alters the area of cou…
An official atlas of North Korea
What I bring you today is a real gem that I have been searching for a long time and have finally managed to get my hands on a copy. It is a collection of 672 maps found in the Great Korean Encyclopaedia, North Korea’s reference encyclopaedia. More specifically, it is an electronic edition published on CD in the first decade of the 2000s
The casualty count of the Battle of the Somme
A few months ago, thanks to an article by M. E. Rothwell in Cosmographia, I discovered Albert Kahn's wonderful photographic collection. The amount of time I spent that day is not worth mentioning and, although it will take you a long time, I recommend that you take a look too.
Christopher Columbus and the problem of longitude
There are many stories to tell about Christopher Columbus. He was a very peculiar character, and a figure who has been used for different purposes over the last 500 years, as M. E. Rothwell recounted a few days ago in Colombus: Man of History. Today, I am going to give a brief history of his four voyages, focusing on his disastrous attempts to measure longitude durin…
By popular demand, here’s a button for procrastinating, in case you have plenty of things to do, but you don’t feel like. Each time you click on it, it will take you to a different map from the more than 1,100 in the catalogue.
If you like what you read, don’t hesitate to subscribe to receive an email with each new article that is published.
At least one new map is published in the catalogue every day.
The default links go to the Spanish version of the catalogue, but there is a button in the top-left corner to switch to English
This might be your first chance to hear me talk :).
Happy Anniversary! What a brilliant year. I hope 2026 is a great year for you and yours. All the best, John.
Happy Anniversary and may this newsletter continue to grow. I learn a lot here. Also, thanks for the shoutout!