Subtle Survivor Belt Buckle Hides a Collection of Useful Tools

Just by looking at it, you wouldn’t know that this minimalist belt buckle holds a whole slew of tools inside. The SlideBelt, a survival belt, equips those who wear it with a number of items that help with tasks both indoors and outdoors.

Inside the ratchet belt buckle, wearers can find a knife, bottle opener, flashlight, and fire starter stick. And even the belt itself can be used as a tool—the durable material is made “of an internal webbing core coated in a durable TPU alloy protective shield” and can be used as a rope to bundle branches or pull heavy objects. At the moment, the survival belt comes in four colors: black, desert tan, olive drab, and classic brown.

The belt is heat resistant up to 214°F, making it a safe bet for sitting by the campfire. Continuous notches on the inside make it easy to adjust the length to any size, and the design lets you cut off surplus belt material if needed.

Gifs from SlideBelts, YouTube


January 12, 2017 – 6:30am

Up Your Game With 15 Pop Culture Decks of Playing Cards

Image credit: 
Amazon

Whether you’re known to play a solo game of Solitaire, host poker night, or play a round of Kings with friends, having a good looking deck of cards around can come in handy. If these beautifully designed cards don’t make the cut, check out the options below that have pop culture references in spades.

1. PRINCESS BRIDE; $10

If you think a Princess Bride-themed deck of cards is inconceivable, think again! In addition to the “The Brute Squad” deck of cards pictured above, there are two other officially licensed variations by the same company, Albino Dragon. The “As You Wish” set features ornate illustrations, while the “Storming the Castle” type comes with darker themes and drawings.

Find It: Amazon

2. FIREFLY; $15

Fans who are still upset about the untimely end of Firefly might take some comfort in this officially licensed and pre-weathered set of cards. For this set, artist Ben Mund created illustrations of objects and characters from the short-lived Fox series.

Find It: Amazon

3. THE GOONIES; $10

Grab your treasure map and get ready to take on a challenge with this Goonies-themed deck. Illustrated by popular artist Nat Iwata, the colorful pack depicts characters from the 1985 cult classic.

Find It: Amazon

4. ADVENTURE TIME; $7

The set, decked out in characters from the Land of Ooo, is perfectly suited for fans of the Cartoon Network series. There’s also a gender-swapped version with Fiona and Cake, in case you’re into Ice King fan fiction.

Find It: Amazon

5. ALIEN; $10

Not for the faint of heart: If you’re intrigued by the aesthetic of the Alien franchise, then these ghoulish cards are for you. Each face card features an alien, facehugger, or chestburster.

Find It: Amazon

6. WIZARD OF OZ; $10

This illustrated set comes with a different character on each face card. There’s also a silver pack (like the color of Dorothy’s slippers in the book) that was printed in honor of the film’s 75th anniversary in 2014.

Find It: Amazon

7. GHOSTBUSTERS; $10

These officially licensed cards by Albino Dragon have original illustrations. Each face card has a different character from the classic ‘80s comedy, including Slimer, Peter Venkman, and Winston Zeddemore.

Find It: Amazon

8. DEADPOOL; $7

Celebrate the smart aleck anti-hero with this bright red set of cards. The officially licensed deck has 52 different pictures, so you’re in for a surprise every time you pull a new card.

Find It: Amazon

9. ONCE UPON A TIME; $7

Fans of the ABC hit Once Upon a Time will love playing games with all their favorite fairy tale characters. Each collector’s box includes two unique decks, featuring a linen-type finish and photos from the show on each card.

Find It: ThinkGeek

10. GREMLINS; $10

You can still play with these cards after dark—just don’t get them wet. Each card in the officially licensed deck is decorated with a different image of a Gremlin, except for the King of Hearts, which obviously has Gizmo.

Find It: ThinkGeek

11. 8-BIT VIDEO GAMES; $15

While not dedicated to any specific games, this deck of cards is an ode to video games of old. The 8-bit themed deck has all the familiar themes from vintage video games: angry gorillas, pixelated hearts, and even backs that look suspiciously like levels in Zelda.

Find It: Amazon

12. FRIDAY THE 13TH; $7

Pay homage to a few iconic horror movie villains. Besides Jason (pictured above), you can also get cards with the bad guys from 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street and 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Find It: Amazon

13. BEETLEJUICE; $7

These appropriately striped cards feature images from one of Tim Burton’s more beloved Halloween flicks. Maybe if you say Beetlejuice three times, he’ll appear and help you cheat.

Find It: Amazon

14. GAME OF THRONES; $11

When you play a game of Go Fish with these Game of Thrones cards, you can probably lose without losing your head.

Find It: Amazon

15. INSTAGRAM; $22

None of the decks on this list work for you? Try making your own. This customizable set can be made with photos from your Instagram account. Just select your favorite images and they can be immortalized on 54 glossy cards.

Find It: Firebox


January 11, 2017 – 6:00pm

How Physicians Care for Patients in the Most Isolated Place on Earth

filed under: science
Image credit: 
iStock

When physician Dale Mole stepped off the C-130 turboprop plane that had landed at the South Pole in January 2012, he felt a twinge of disappointment. It was only minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Granted, it was summer—but he had expected worse.

“The average winter temperature is minus 85,” he says. As the weeks and months passed, however, the thermostat dropped as low as minus 107. Mole’s exhaled breath would freeze in mid-air; no one dared leave bare flesh exposed more than 10 or 15 seconds; teeth would ache for hours after exposure.

Once, as Mole was cresting a snow bank, his face mask froze. “I had to remove my mask to breathe and the super-cooled air felt like ice daggers in my throat,” he says. “I was afraid my windpipe was going to freeze, which could prove fatal.”

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at twilight. Courtesy Dale Mole.

In Antarctica, the coldest and most isolated place on the planet, even the simple act of breathing becomes an endurance test. Home to three permanent U.S. expedition outposts—McMurdo Station, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, and Palmer Station—it’s inaccessible eight months out of the year due to oppressive weather conditions. Researchers from a variety of countries fly in with the knowledge they’re about to be effectively cut off from the world.

But what happens when a medical situation arises? More than 2800 miles from the nearest hospital in New Zealand, Antarctic crews must rely on the expertise of a single physician responsible for upwards of 150 people. (The number varies by season.) Working autonomously, the doctor is charged with analyzing x-rays and blood work, providing aftercare, overseeing pharmaceutical duties and even performing dentistry. Serious conditions that could be managed in a major facility become radical emergencies. Surgery is a major undertaking, and intensive care can’t be sustained.

Such adversity is not for the claustrophobic or easily shaken. But for Mole, volunteering was academic. “I signed up,” he says, “because I wanted the challenge of providing medical care in the most remote and austere environment on Earth.”

The Right Stuff

The view from the observation deck. Courtesy Dale Mole.

Scott Parazynski, M.D., had spent 16 years in NASA’s astronaut corps and was an experienced mountaineer when the offer came to become Chief Medical Officer overseeing healthcare for the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP). Having tended to climbers all the way to the summit of Mount Everest, he was familiar with the psychological and physical demands of practicing medicine without a net.

“It takes a really broad skill set,” he says. “I call it MacGyver medicine. What can you do to diagnose and treat conditions in a really remote environment when the chips are down? You have to invent solutions on the fly.”

Physicians who volunteer typically have backgrounds as surgeons or emergency room veterans. When Parazynski selected former submarine medical officer Mole to go to the South Pole, the 63-year-old underwent a rigorous screening: an EKG to assess cardiovascular health, an ultrasound of the gallbladder to rule out any simmering problems, and a psychological test.

Once approved, Mole left Denver for New Zealand, which connected him to McMurdo Station. There, a dentist gave him a crash course on fillings and root canals. After a week, he boarded a flight to the South Pole, where his patient base of 49 scientists and researchers studied everything from geophysics to astronomy in a fuel-powered compound; the dry air (the area averages seven percent humidity) forces residents to guzzle four to six liters of water a day. Mole was careful not to touch any metal with his bare hands—it can take the skin right off—and investigated his professional tools, a mixture of modern and museum-worthy.

“Some of the items I remember from visiting the doctor in the 1950s,” he says. There was a World War II embalming kit, a straitjacket, and glass syringes with reusable needles. “Some of our lab equipment was also designed for use on animals, but was perfectly suitable for humans. The x-ray unit was the portable kind used by veterinarians, but it worked.”

Ventilators, ultrasound, and critical life support devices are also present, though luxuries like an MRI device would be cost-prohibitive owing to the small population. “You’re relying upon clinical judgment and your resourcefulness,” Parazynski says.

Because the Antarctic workers are carefully screened for any major conditions, Mole and other physicians frequently find themselves treating conditions common to any industrial environment: slips, common colds, and lacerations. The plummeting temperatures and non-existent humidity also give rise to dry skin conditions and respiratory ailments. One, “the McMurdo crud,” is a hacking cough that tends to nag at patients.

Dawn at the American base. Courtesy Dale Mole.

Despite the cold, frostbite is not as common as one might expect. Mole saw only a few cases, albeit one that resulted in a patient losing part of an ear. Most injuries, he says, “were sports related, as many played basketball, volleyball and dodge ball on their off-duty time.”

Sean Roden, M.D., who stayed during the comparatively warmer summer months prior to Mole’s arrival, recalls that altitude sickness was a problem for many: Antarctic stations are 9500 feet above sea level. Staff and crew take Diamox, a drug that helps adjust the body’s chemistry to the environment, but it isn’t always effective. “I had a headache for over two months,” Roden says. “Everyone was just constantly short of breath, had a headache, had a hard time sleeping. You get winded just brushing your teeth.”

Summer also invites a scourge of insomniacs, with the sun refusing to go away and inhabitants putting up blackout shutters to try and cope with the irregular seasons. “People were walking up and down hallways, not really awake, not asleep,” Roden says, like zombies.”

When Doctors Get Sick

The modest inpatient ward. Courtesy Dale Mole.

It’s a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare: alone in the Antarctic, with the lone physician too ill to care for anyone else. Modern screenings have reduced that possibility, but the area has been home to a series of legendary crises.

Some countries require their doctors undergo an appendectomy to ward off the potential for appendicitis. If that seems excessive, consider the case of Leonid Rogozov, a Russian physician who diagnosed himself with a swollen appendix during a 1961 expedition. Trapped in the Austral winter with no flights in or out—the harsh weather can prevent aircraft from functioning properly—he deputized a few researchers to be his surgical assistants and cut out his own organ using only local anesthesia. He recovered in just two weeks.

In 1999, Jerri Nielsen discovered a lump in her breast. She performed a biopsy using only an ice cube to numb the area; upon discovering a cancerous growth, she had drugs air-dropped to her until she was able fly out for treatment.

If anything similar were to occur today, physicians would have the benefit of teleconferencing with colleagues. “We can look remotely in someone’s ear, eyes, listen to their heart, share views of ultrasound or EKG tracing,” Parazynski says. “We can look over their shoulder and be part of the decision making process.”

That assumes, however, communications are working. Mole says Internet access was available only a few hours at a stretch. Without it, “You rely upon textbooks you either brought with you or were available in the small South Pole medical library.”

Dental concerns are treated here. Note the armrests for ease of gripping and writhing. Courtesy Dale Mole.

Much of a physician’s time is spent in preventative preparation, training staff in the event of an emergency. During his stay, Roden orchestrated the medical evacuation of a crew member who had fallen ill with a neurological issue more than 400 kilometers from base. “We had rehearsed it in a drill, so we were prepped for it.” (The patient recovered and returned to work.)

Off-duty, Roden says numerous groups were devoted to salsa dancing, knitting, or Doctor Who viewing parties; Mole read, ran four to six miles a day on the treadmill, and ventured outside sporting at least six layers of insulation—anything to stretch out from his cramped 6 x 10-foot living quarters. He says he experienced none of the depression that can result from a lack of sunlight for months at a time.

“Being at the South Pole was like living on another planet, one with only one day and one night per year,” he says. “There was always something unique to experience, so I was never bored or felt an overwhelming desire to leave.”

Breaking the Ice

The remains of the cables used to power the station, stacked up by workers and dubbed “Spoolhenge.” Courtesy Dale Mole.

After 10 months, Mole saw his first plane, thought of his wife, and breathed a sigh of relief. With winter over, he was able to return to the States in November 2012. During his tenure, he had attended lectures on art history, cared for a group requiring everything from dentistry to physical therapy, and trained non-medical staff to provide critical care in the event of an emergency.

Roden’s four-month stay was a kind of sensory deprivation. Back home, life had gone from being a blinding sea of white to glowing Technicolor. “Coming off the ice, seeing a sunset, the colors were just, wow,” he says. “Getting back to sea level was amazing. I felt great.”

Such experiences are more than an endurance test: they help inform future remote care in environments as varied as rural America, third world nations, and even Mars. Advanced handheld diagnostic tools, Parazynski says, are already on the way. “The notion is to develop a device that would have the diagnostic capabilities of a full lab in a major hospital. Not overly prescriptive, just basic physiological parameters, blood chemistries. It will help revolutionize healthcare in remote and in regular health care.”

While the efforts of Mole and other physicians are a valuable learning tool for future explorers, it’s the physician who may benefit the most. “The months of profound darkness, the majestic starry skies, the shimmering auroras, the icy desolation, going to bed at night a few feet from where all the lines of longitude converge …” Mole trails off. “These are the memories I will carry with me to my grave.”

This story originally appeared in 2015.


January 11, 2017 – 8:00am

Uncork Bottles Like a Cowboy With This Gun-Shaped Wine Opener

Image credit: 
Amazon

Opening a bottle of wine with a run-of-the-mill opener isn’t always the most graceful pursuit, and even some of the fancier devices are clunky and difficult to use. Now you can avoid the fuss and bring a little Wild West magic to your next bottle share with the wine opener gun by WineOvation.

The cordless device works just like a normal electric wine opener, but it’s cleverly disguised like a pistol. Simply point the tool directly over the cork and pull the trigger; the opener will automatically stop once it’s out. Next, push the trigger forward and the gun will push out the cork. With help from an internal battery, the opener can pop as many as 30 bottles before needing to be charged. Keeping in theme, the charging port looks just like a holster. The fancy piece of equipment has a soft rubber handle, and comes with a foil cutter so you can get to your vino as fast as humanly possible. The device comes in pink or silver, so, theoretically, you could color coordinate your corker with your all-time favorite blend.

[h/t Oddity Mall]


January 11, 2017 – 6:30am

How Long Does It Take to Get to the Bottom of an Excel Spreadsheet?

Image credit: 
Excel Screenshot

Is there a final row in an Excel spreadsheet? Just like finding out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, there is only one way to find out (OK, fine you can Google it, but that spoils the fun). Tenacious internet pioneer Hunter Hobbs sought to find out how long it took to reach the bottom by keeping a steady hand on the down arrow key.

Unlike the cheating owl from the Tootsie Pop commercial, Hobbs adhered to some strict rules: No taking breaks, no using the control key, and no biting into lollipops. All he could do was sit, keep his finger on the key, and wait. With the help of some small distractions (like a book, a pizza, and a paddle ball), Hobbs finally made it to the end—after nine and a half hours. Thanks to his valiant efforts, we now know how long it takes to get to row 1,048,576, so we never have to do it ourselves.

[h/t SPLOID]


January 10, 2017 – 12:30pm

Monopoly Is Asking Fans to Pick the New Game Tokens

Image credit: 
Hasbro / Getty Images

Unless you’re playing with a themed or off-brand board (hello, Cat-opoly), then you probably know what tokens are coming with your Monopoly game. The current line-up—the battleship, top hat, thimble, wheelbarrow, cat, Scottie dog, car, and shoe—isn’t much different than the original group that debuted in 1935. Now, Monopoly is throwing tradition to the wind and asking its fans what kind of playing pieces they’d like to see.

Monopoly and Buzzfeed teamed up to start a new event called Monopoly Token Madness. From today until January 31, fans can head to VoteMonopoly.com and pick their favorite tokens out of a list of 64 options, including a gramophone, a T.rex, a penguin, and a flip flop. The winning pieces will become the new standard and possibly knock out existing favorites like the Scottie dog.

You can click here to vote for your favorites.


January 10, 2017 – 9:30am

Sushi Bazooka Lets You Shoot Out Sushi Rolls in Record Time

Image credit: 
Amazon

You don’t have to go to a restaurant (or even take cooking classes) if you want a fresh sushi roll. Now making maki is easier than ever with the help of the handy Sushi Bazooka. The cannon-shaped kitchen device is the perfect item for making a ton of perfectly round rolls in record time. Hosting a party? Just really hungry? The easy-to-use cannon has you covered. Unlike traditional rolling mats, the bazooka offers a fool-proof design that makes the process easy, even for beginners.

To get started, line the inside of the tube with sticky rice. Next, add your desired ingredients in the middle (just like filling a burrito). Then simply push the plunger and watch the rice-lined creation pop out. You can wrap the roll in seaweed or cut immediately and serve as-is. And since you’re making the rolls yourself, you can decide on the rice-to-filling ratio and how thick you want each roll.

If a roll isn’t really your thing, you can also make rice cubes and spheres.

[h/t Oddity Mall]

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting! 


January 10, 2017 – 6:30am

WWI Centennial: Germany’s Fateful Gamble

filed under: war, world-war-i, ww1
Image credit: 

US National Archives

Erik Sass is covering the events of the war exactly 100 years after they happened. This is the 262nd installment in the series. 

January 9, 1917: Germany’s Fateful Gamble

The most fateful decision of the First World War was made on January 9, 1917, at a top-secret meeting of Germany’s civil and military leaders at Pless Castle in Silesia in Eastern Germany. Here, at the urging of chief of the general staff Paul von Hindenburg and his close collaborator, first quartermaster Erich Ludendorff, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg reluctantly agreed to the resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare – a gamble that would decide the outcome of the war.

As 1917 began, Germany’s strategic options were narrowing. The plan of the previous chief of the general staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, to bleed France white at Verdun had succeeded in causing massive casualties but failed to split the Allies or knock France out of the war, as hoped. Germany’s main allies, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, were both on the defensive, requiring more and more assistance to simply survive, and the simultaneous Allied offensives at the Somme and in Galicia had sorely taxed German manpower and material.

Meanwhile Germany’s vast industrial machine was gradually being stretched to the limit, while shortages of food and fuel stirred growing discontent in the civilian population. The indecisive Battle of Jutland in May 1916 left the Allied naval blockade undisturbed, and Britain’s adoption of conscription was putting several million new soldiers in the field. 

But Hindenburg and Ludendorff believed that victory was still within reach, provided Germany acted boldly and swiftly. Indeed the Allies also found themselves overstretched, as France reached the limits of her own manpower following Verdun and the Russians suddenly found themselves responsible for shoring up Romania, or what was left of it. Further, as before Germany enjoyed the advantage of a central position, allowing it to move forces between various fronts and perhaps defeat its enemies “in detail,” or one at a time.

In order to exploit these opportunities, in 1917 Hindenburg and Ludendorff contemplated yet another shift in focus, this time from west to east (reversing Falkhenhayn’s earlier switch from east to west). On the Western Front, they planned a surprise withdrawal from the Somme to massive, newly constructed fortifications at the Siegfried Line – known to the Allies as the Hindenburg Line – shortening the front by around 25 miles and freeing up two whole armies for service elsewhere. 

By going on the defensive on the Western Front, they hoped, Germany would be able to deliver a knockout blow to Italy, Russia, or both; Russia in particular was already teetering on the edge of revolution, and the incompetent tsarist regime just needed a final push before it collapsed.

However Hindenburg and Ludendorff realized that simply shortening the Western Front and digging in wouldn’t be enough: they also had to ratchet up the pressure on Britain in order to keep the British from launching a new offensive like the Somme, and maybe even knock them out of the war. To accomplish this they pinned their hopes on a new (but no longer secret) weapon: the submarine.

“Germany Is Playing Her Last Card” 

Germany had already tried unrestricted U-boat warfare twice, unleashing a growing fleet of submarines on Allied and neutral shipping, with permission to sink unarmed merchant ships without warning. But on both occasions these campaigns were eventually suspended (first in the summer of 1915, then again in the spring of 1916) in the face of protests from neutral countries, especially the United States of America, over civilian casualties. 

The threat of war with the U.S. had forced Berlin to back down twice, but by early 1917 Germany’s leaders were willing to take the risk. A number of factors contributed to this shift, including the general sense that time was working against Germany, as well as public demands for retaliation in kind against the “Starvation Blockade” maintained by the British Royal Navy. The steady growth of Germany’s U-boat fleet also held out the promise of a decisive result. 

Click to enlarge

Most important, however, were Britain’s growing dependence on U.S. imports to sustain its war effort, a vulnerability which could be exploited by attacks on shipping, and the resulting enmity of Germany’s new military leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, towards the U.S.

According to the U.S. ambassador to Berlin, James Gerard, in the fall of 1916 Ludendorff was on the record as stating that “he did not believe America could do more damage to Germany than she had done if the countries were actually at war, and that he considered that, practically, America and Germany were engaged in hostilities.” With the ascendancy of Hindenburg and Ludendorff over Germany’s civilian government – in effect a bloodless military coup countenanced by Kaiser Wilhelm II – the balance of political power in Berlin shifted towards open confrontation.

Click to enlarge

The minutes of the meeting on January 9, 1917, make clear that Bethmann-Hollweg was now playing second fiddle to Hindenburg and Ludendorff, public heroes who enjoyed the backing of the fickle monarch. Germany’s leaders also allowed themselves to be swayed by optimistic thinking, in the form of cheery projections from the Admiralty about how quickly British morale and war-making capacity could be destroyed through unrestricted sinkings. 

Net.lib.byu.edu, Click to enlarge

Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, who headed the Admiralty’s analytical division, calculated that Germany’s growing U-boat fleet could sink 500,000-600,000 tons of British shipping per month at first – a forecast that proved remarkably accurate. However Holtzendorff erred in his assumptions about the impact that this would have on Britain’s total available shipping, as the British could requisition neutral shipping and order more replacements from American shipyards. The German Admiralty also failed to anticipate Allied tactics for convoying merchant ships (they believed convoys were ineffective, and if anything would make it easier for submarines to find targets). Finally, the German high command underestimated Britain’s ability to increase domestic production by finding manufacturing substitutes, implement rationing, and bring new farmland under cultivation; although ordinary British people certainly suffered from shortages and chaffed at rationing, the U-boat campaign fell far short of “starving Britain to her knees.”

Click to enlarge

Equally important to the German (mis)calculations was the belief that America, as a mercantile but not mercenary nation, was basically unwilling to fight, due both to her traditional isolation and what they viewed as the social and cultural incoherence of the American population, resulting from the large proportion of immigrants (including millions of German descent, whom they assumed would not be loyal to their adopted land).

In short they predicted that the undisciplined, polyglot American rabble would resist conscription and European-style mass mobilization. Instead, any declaration of war would be mostly symbolic, or as Bethmann-Hollweg summarized the military leaders’ argument: “America’s assistance, in case she enters the war, will consist in the delivery of food supplies to England, financial support, delivery of airplanes and the dispatching of corps of volunteers.” And its armed forces were so pathetically small that even if America did fight, Hindenburg and Ludendorff assured the civilians, Germany could win the war before it had a chance to mobilize enough men to make a difference in Europe. 

It’s worth pointing out that even at this critical stage, not everyone was convinced. Indeed Bethmann-Hollweg sounded a skeptical note during the meeting, observing, “Admiral von Holtzendorff assumes that we will have England on her knees by the next harvest… Of course, it must be admitted that those prospects are not capable of being demonstrated by proof.” Nevertheless he bowed to the general’s convictions, thus completing the submission of Germany’s civilian government to its military.

When the decision was publicized at the end of the month, everyone understood that Germany’s fate was riding on the outcome. Evelyn Blucher, an Englishwoman married to a German aristocrat living in Berlin, confided in her diary: “We all know and feel that Germany is playing her last card; with what results, no one can possibly foretell.” Unrestricted U-boat warfare would resume on February 1, 1917.

See the previous installment or all entries.


January 9, 2017 – 11:00pm

The 10 Most Important Maps in U.S. History

filed under: History, Maps
Image credit: 
istock

Michael Blanding is the author of The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps.

America was made out of pieces of paper. There are the pieces we all know about—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Then there are those lesser-known sheets of paper on which the changing features and borders of our country were drawn.

Maps have played a crucial role, ever since the discovery of the New World, in publicizing the discoveries of explorers, altering perceptions of control, and refereeing the claims of competing powers in finally setting the shape of the United States of America. It’s not too strong a statement to say that without these pieces of paper, the United States as we know it would never have existed—or else, it would look radically different today. Here are 10 of the most important maps in making the dream of our nation a reality.

1. Henricus Martellus // “Untitled [Map of the world of Christopher Columbus].” Manuscript Map, 1489.

Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University

When Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492, he did it with a map in hand—this one, or one very much like it. Only two copies survive of this map, drawn by German cartographer Heinrich Hammer, who Latinized his name in the fashion of the day to Henricus Martellus Germanus. They have the distinction of being the most complete picture of the world as Columbus and his contemporaries saw it. In fact, Columbus may never have set sail at all if it weren’t for the story that the map told, a story that ultimately would be proven false.

Some background: No educated person in Columbus’ day really thought the earth was flat—the Greeks had determined it was round more than a millennium before. And some Greek astronomers and mathematicians had even accurately calculated the earth’s circumference at 25,000 miles. But Martellus relied on the wrong mathematicians, who calculated the circumference at only 18,000 miles. He also dramatically extended the length of Asia to 7000 miles longer than it actually is—making it seem like a quick trip sailing west across the ocean from Europe to Japan. That gave Columbus the confidence to argue to Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella that a western route to the Spice Islands was not only doable, but would also be easier than sailing around Africa. Of course, as we now know, that wasn’t the case, as Columbus found when he ran smack into another continent in the way. So confident was Columbus in his map that he died believing he’d found Asia—when really he’d found a new continent entirely.

2. Martin Waldseemüller // “Universalis Cosmographia Secundum Ptholomaei Traditionem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes.” St. Die, 1507.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, g3200 ct000725C.

The most expensive map ever purchased, this map was sold to the Library of Congress in 1989—for a cool $10 million. Why the fuss? The entire value can be traced to one word that appears on this map for the first time in history: America. Even though Columbus got there first, Christopher never claimed to have discovered a new continent. By contrast, a self-promoting Italian sailor named Amerigo Vespucci loudly declared to anyone who would listen that he had discovered a new continent on his voyages west from Portugal—and in a pamphlet, he described the native inhabitants in intimate detail. “Everyone of both sexes goes about naked,” he wrote, continuing that “the women… although they go naked and are exceedingly lustful, still have rather shapely and clean bodies.”

Such titillating prose ensured a wide distribution for his pamphlets, which eventually fell into the hands of a young German mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller. He, in turn, was putting together a new atlas of the world that included a sliver of land in the west that was beginning to show up on Portuguese charts. For the first time, Waldseemüller surrounded that sliver completely by water, and reasoning that all of the other continents were named after women, he feminized Amerigo’s first name to create the name “America” to describe it.

Unfortunately, doubts started appearing almost immediately about whether Vespucci had even been on a voyage, much less whether he’d discovered a new continent, and in later editions of his map, Waldseemüller took the name off of the new land, calling it merely “Terra Incognita” instead. But the name had already stuck, giving us the name of our continent, and our country, today.

3. Captain John Smith // “New England.” London, 1616.

Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

We all know John Smith from his role in founding the Virginia Colony—and for his role along with Pocahontas as one half of America’s original “power couple.” But after he was drummed out of Virginia for reasons best not gone into here, Smith had a second act exploring the area then known as “North Virginia.” Smith figured it needed a catchier moniker, so he branded it “New England,” both to separate it from the southern colony that spurned him and to tell other European countries “hands off.”

Of course, John Smith also wanted to claim it for John Smith, and so he included a giant portrait of himself taking up a corner of the map, which he used to illustrate a book about the new lands he’d discovered. (In later editions of the map, he even updated the portrait, making his beard fuller and bushier.) More brazenly, in order to claim the territory for England, he offered the map to the crown prince Charles and asked him to change the names of all of the native villages to names of English towns—creating a fictional geography that might entice colonists to found such towns for real. Most of those names have since fallen by the wayside—but one has survived. When the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth in 1620, they did so with a copy of Smith’s map in hand, steering their way to an attractive harbor that Smith had coincidentally named “Plimouth.” Upon arrival, they took the name for their own, and there it remains on the map to this day.

4. Guillaume De L’Isle // “Carte De La Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi.” Paris, 1718.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, g3700 ct000270.

The English may have claimed New England, but the rest of the continent was still very much up for grabs throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries—and the French decided they wanted a piece of it. In fact, as this map shows, they wanted a big piece of it.

An early example of cartographic propaganda, this map plays fast and loose with borders to claim virtually all of North America for the French, splashing “La Louisiane” in big letters across the continent’s midsection, and squeezing the English colonies almost entirely off the page. It even claims “Caroline” was named for the French king Charles IX, not the English kings Charles I and Charles II.

This was no idle threat—at the time, Guillaume de l’Isle was arguably the greatest mapmaker of his age, employing new scientific methods to more exactly survey the land, and his map was much more accurate than any English maps at the time. When the English saw it, they were incensed, no doubt fuming about French audacity, and British mapmakers began producing maps of their own that exaggerated English claims in North America at the expense of their enemies across the channel. That spurred the French to produce more propaganda maps in response, and for 35 years, the two countries duked it out in a paper war over who owned the continent.

Eventually, the paper war broke out into a real war, which we know as the French and Indian War, to decide who owned the continent in reality. England emerged victorious, taking all of the territory south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi, and pushing Louisiana off the map to the west of the river.

5. John Mitchell // “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America.” London, 1755.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, g3300 ar003900.

Produced as part of the one-upmanship between England and France in their “paper war” over control of North America, this map by Virginia native John Mitchell boldly claims nearly all the continent for England. South of the Great Lakes, in fact, Mitchell lets loose, extending the borders of Georgia and the Carolinas west straight across the Mississippi, presumably to the Pacific. (Imagine today if North Carolina was 3000 miles long!)

But none of this is what caused a former head map curator at the Library of Congress to declare Mitchell’s map the “most important map in American history.” The reason for that is its role not in starting a war, but in ending one. When British and American diplomats met at the end of the Revolutionary War to draw the definitive boundary between the United States and Canada during the 1783 Treaty of Paris, they relied upon Mitchell’s map to set the borders of the new nation, creating for the first time the concept of an independent United States of America. Unfortunately, the language in the treaty setting the boundary was ambiguous, especially in the west. That has sent American and Canadian officials back to the map countless times during the last 200 years in order to argue over the exact course of the border, which was not definitively set in some spots until 1984. (And, in fact, some islands in the Gulf of Maine are still in dispute.)

Fun postscript: During treaty negotiations, a British diplomat drew a red line across the map up to the point he thought the Americans would claim—when the Americans claimed less, however, he hid the map, and the so-called “red line” map remained hidden in the British archives for decades, lest the Yanks catch wind of the fact that they could have gotten more of the continent than they did.

6. Aaron Arrowsmith // “A Map of the United States of North America Drawn from a Number of Critical Researches.” London, 1802.

Courtesy of The New York Public Library. www.nypl.org.

When the United States had been formed in 1783, the most accurate large-scale maps of North America were decades old and full of errors and misconceptions. Ironically, it was an English cartographer named Aaron Arrowsmith who diligently gathered information in order to create the first comprehensive map of the new country. He drew from a variety of sources, including reports by Native Americans which had been brought to him by Hudson Bay fur traders. In his synthesis of the resulting data, he proved particularly adept at weighing the relative merits of different cartographic sources and selecting the ones that proved most accurate. His resulting map, first produced in 1796, was not only then the most accurate map of the existing United States, but also faithfully sketched the unexplored territory west of the Mississippi that the new country was soon to acquire.

Arrowsmith constantly updated his map for years after the original release, and the 1802 edition shows the borders of the U.S. just before President Thomas Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase. Thus, the map was the one that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark used to plot their famous expedition across the continent, choosing the Missouri River for their route since it appeared to be the fastest way west.

7. William Clark // “A Map of Part of the Continent of North America.” Manuscript map, 1810.

Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States more than doubled its land area. The only trouble was, most of the new territory was a vast no-man’s land that had been little traveled—and mapped even less. President Thomas Jefferson’s mandate to explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was clear: find “the most direct & practicable water communication across the continent.”

Setting out on their mission, Lewis and Clark headed west up the Missouri River, hoping to find a short portage to another river flowing the opposite direction down to the Pacific Ocean. What they found, instead, was a vast, seemingly impenetrable mountain range with peak after peak to traverse before they could hope to reach the Pacific. A trained cartographer, Clark took meticulous surveys of the Rockies during the 1804–1806 expedition, and later updated his maps with new information from other explorers such as Zebulon Pike. The manuscript map he produced in 1810—which was eventually printed by Samuel Lewis (no relation to Meriwether) in 1814—forever ended American hopes of finding a water route across the continent; at the same time, it brought back the first picture of new resource-rich lands that would eventually be even more important to the fate of the nation.

8. John Melish // “Map of the United States with the Contiguous British and Spanish Possessions.” Philadelphia, 1816.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, g3700 ct000675.

At the start of the 19th century, most maps were still printed in well-established firms in London, Paris, and Amsterdam by cartographers who had their knowledge passed down through generations of masters and apprentices. One of those mapmakers, a Scot named John Melish, traveled extensively in the new United States in the early 1800s—but instead of going back home to make his maps, he set up shop in Philadelphia as the first true American mapmaker. And he entered the field with a bang with this indisputable masterpiece, published in 1816, which shows for the first time something approximating the outline of the United States we know today. In fact, as Melish later recounted, he was originally planning to draw the boundary of the country at the Continental Divide in the midst of the Rockies—but decided instead to claim U.S. territory as far as the Pacific since “part of this territory unquestionably belongs to the United States.”

Actually, there was a very big question about to whom the wild, unexplored Northwest belonged—to say nothing of the disputed lands of Texas, which Melish also boldly claimed from the Spanish. Melish’s map, continually reprinted and updated over the years, began to put those questions to rest, however, cementing in the minds of people all over the world that the U.S. was truly a transcontinental proposition. Many historians see in the map the visual representation of the idea of “Manifest Destiny”—the claim that Americans had the somehow inalienable right to settle the full length of the North American continent. One adherent of that claim, Thomas Jefferson, proudly put a copy of Melish’s map in the entrance hall of his estate, Monticello, and future presidents used it in treaty negotiations with European powers to push the boundaries of their ever-growing country.

9. John Disturnell // “Mapa de los Estados Unidos de Mejico.” New York, 1847.

Courtesy of Library of Congress, g4410 ct000127.

Although Texas was formally admitted to the Union in 1845, the country of Mexico didn’t quite agree with the southern boundary claimed by the state at the Rio Grande. A year later, they attacked across the river, and the United States declared war.

As battles raged across the Southwest, many Americans followed along on this map produced by New York guidebook publisher John Disturnell, who had conveniently released it around the same time. Unfortunately, Disturnell was not himself a cartographer, and his map was wildly inaccurate in places, placing El Paso, for example, some 34 miles north and 100 miles east of its true location. One contemporary explorer called the map “one of the most inaccurate of all those I have seen.”

Despite those faults, however, when the war ended in 1848 and the United States gained not only Texas but also California, Nevada, Utah, and much of New Mexico and Arizona, diplomats appended Disturnell’s faulty map to the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in order to set the boundary lines between the countries. That meant no end of headaches for future generations of surveyors called in to reconcile the map with the treaty language in order to determine the true southern boundary of the United States—which, in some cases, wasn’t finally fixed until 1963. On the plus side, the inaccuracies in the map led to a flurry of government surveying in the West that produced many more accurate maps of the territory sooner than might have otherwise been done.

10. U.K. Met Office // “Allied Forces Chart for 6 June, 1944 at 1300.” London, 1944.

Courtesy of U.K. Met Office.

Most of the most important maps in United States history date from the 18th and 19th centuries, when the country was young and the boundaries were being set. One map from the 20th century that played a crucially important role in determining the balance of U.S. history, however, wasn’t a map of America at all, but a map of the English Channel produced by the U.K. Met Office.

The British government office responsible for weather forecasts made the map on June 6, 1944, the day of the largest military invasion in history: when the Allied Forces in World War II landed in Normandy during D-Day. In fact, the invasion was originally scheduled to be launched on June 5, 1944—but a Scottish weather forecaster, Captain James Stagg, warned against it due to clouds and strong winds that would have hindered air cover for the invasion. U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower waited with bated breath for the word the following day; if the weather didn’t clear, then the Allies would have to wait another two weeks until the tides and moonlight were right.

After consulting all of the information he had—including German meterological data acquired by Allied code breakers—Stagg produced this map, which showed an afternoon break in the weather. Eisenhower gave the word “go,” and the invasion went off as planned, allowing the Allies to begin their inexorable drive to Berlin. Had they gone a day earlier, the invasion might have failed, and it might have taken another year for the Allies to defeat Germany, possibly giving the USSR much more of Europe after the war. Later, it was discovered that the Germans had actually botched their own forecast that day, earning the Allies the element of surprise. As for Stagg, he sent another map to Eisenhower two weeks later showing that, had the Allies waited, they would have run into the worst storms in the English Channel in decades. “Thanks,” wrote Ike on the map, “and thank the Gods of war we went when we did.”

Michael Blanding is a Boston-based investigative journalist. The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps, was published by Gotham Books and named a New England Indie Bestseller by the New England Independent Booksellers Association. This post originally appeared in 2014.


January 9, 2017 – 5:30am