Cartography Quotes
The patent laws were introduced in England in 1624. Lincoln is the only American President who applied for and was granted a patent. He invented a device for getting a grounded boat on a sandbar back into the water.
At the time, the major European countries were in a competitive scramble for colonies in Africa—so much so that there were very few independent territories left. The maps and borders of Africa were really decided by the Europeans.
Yale University had announced the discovery of a Norse map called the Vinland Map. It was an old Viking map that showed the East Coast of America and Canada as well as Greenland and Iceland. It purported to prove that the Vikings had been to America before Columbus. This was shocking and unbelievable to large numbers of Italian Americans many of whom lived in New York City. Most Italian Americans rejected the possibility that the map could be genuine, but there had to be a reason that it was forged. In the midst of the Cold War, there was an obvious villain and it did not take long before large numbers of people believed and repeated the headline. The quotation shows how rabid the anti-Communism of the Cold War was. The authenticity of the Vinland Map is still debated. Ironically, Columbus—the “discoverer” of America, never got to North America at all. He landed in and captured some islands in the Caribbean. The Daily News was then the largest circulation newspaper in the United States.
