How old is your globe? [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

How old is your globe? [pdf]

replogleglobes.com

33 pointsTomte35 comments

2008 Serbia -> Kosovo line needs some context IMHO. Obviously not all Serbia became Kosovo, and depending on where you got your map from, there's a chance that even a 2024 edition may not show Kosovo. For example anything from Spain.

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

Are globes bought on a given day even up to date? I don't expect vendors would scrap their stock every time an "update" happens

Imagine an e-ink globe that show change of border across time, even continent if the time horizon is long enough, I will snatch it up in a heart beat

E-ink even allows to stick with the same time, yet change the borders depending upon whom we're asking?

It could also change the borders depending on who looks at it.

It may even change it to a globe of another planet. Or the sun with dynamic sun spots.

Edit: Here it is: https://www.novavisionny.net/3d_globe_led_video_displays.htm...

The Czech Republic changed its official name but many places still use the old name. Same with Eswatini, Côte d'Ivoire, Cabo Verde, etc. I suspect name changes aren't that reliable for dating globes since some of them probably have modern borders and former official names.

A Czech here with a small correction. Countries often have a long and a short version of their name. For example "Federal Republic of Germany" aka "Germany".

We didn't change the name, rather we adopted "Czechia" as an official short variant, since we previously didn't have one. So both are correct.

Otherwise I agree with your point. This is just a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

This document was made by a specific globe manufacturer, so it probably isn't meant to be used to date arbitrary globes, but only theirs.

You're dating the data source used by the globe, not the globe itself. But it guarantees a lower limit of age on any globe.

I used to have a map showing Sikkim, given to me by my grandpa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Sikkim

That's an interesting name, from a turkish perspective...

regardless of all the corrections, questions and additions here: it was a lot of fun to go on a world tour on my old globe and find out when the map was from: 1975. :-)

Clearly this pdf is a couple of years old. It is missing

Turkey -> Türkiye (2022)

I'm sure not all globes say Türkiye now, just like they don't say "España". We don't have to use the native name for a country instead of the English name. We're speaking English after all.

Erdoğan asked people to, yes, but Erdoğan is not in charge of the English language.

Shows how wild the past 4 years have been… I completely missed that and had to look it up.

Was the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which only lasted for 10 years, ever shown on globes during that period, or did most globes continue to label it as Cambodia?

XKCD did a flowchart version of this: https://xkcd.com/1688/

OT, but this is one of my favorite pages on the entire interwebs. It starts exactly where I would have stated (Constantinople or Istanbul), and has some terrific historical gems:

  > How many Germanies are there? 
  > Answers: One | Two | One, but it's _huge_

There should also be an option for 'too many' Germanies.

There's a branch for "Does the HRE exist" (in the top left corner), which basically says that "territorial maps" aren't well defined before the mid-modern period.

OK! Though we also had lots of Germanies in the 19th century between dissolution of HRE and before Bismarck forced the partition into (more or less) two Germanies (Kleindeutschland in the north and Austria-Hungary in the south).

I'm not sure what "Marshall Islands vs Marshall Islands (U.S.)" is supposed to mean. When it seceded from the U.S. it didn't change its name so how would that be visible?

Also Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan, not India and in 1971 not 1972.

The name on the map/globe would be "Marshall Islands" if independent or "Marshall Islands (U.S.)" if still a US territory.

> Also Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan, not India and in 1971 not 1972.

Yep, I have some old map where it is called East Pakistan

I love this game. While driving right around Africa it was fun to see maps with Zaire, or Sudan as one country. Even since my time Swaziland changed its name to Eswatini and Burundi moved its capital. I bet there are other changes I haven’t kept up with

The older entries for Baltics are wrong tho - new/old values are the same for both occupation of 1940 and restoration of independence in 1991.

And same for Thailand / Siam, same in both entries.

The necessity of these kinds of guides makes me wonder: why have map and globemakers so broadly failed to adopt a standard practice of putting a date on world maps?

That's a good question. I've thought about this for titles of guide books, eg "Best Europe Destinations 2024". It seems there's competing interests for making sales: A bookstore might want to buy the new versions every year (more sales), but when there are only old versions on the shelves, people don't want to buy something that looks out of date (less sales). Maybe for globes, they aren't selling many every year, so don't want to create them with dates that will look several years old.

Well it doesn’t have to be in bold title case next to ‘MAP OF THE WORLD’ - just a small print copyright notice with a year on it would do for someone curious about how old the map is.

Seems to be missing Tibet

And it doesn't make any sense that it's missing because it was annexed in 1951 a year with no duplicates (unlike 1949 when many countries changed).

I had a roommate with a Rand-McNally 1942 globe. Really interesting to see the state of the world in the middle of World War II. A few American states as territories, Yugoslavia, the British Empire, Africa practically unrecognizable all carved up and of course, Nazi Germany and Europe in the middle of war.

There should be a lot more you can do, like capitals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_national_capita...

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