Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Pitfall of Outline Maps


This morning I had a major "D'oh!" moment when I realized that Wales does, in fact, exist.

In the preface of The Image of the World, author Peter Whitfield mentions the Evesham Mappa Mundi. I went to the Wikipedia page on Evesham, looked at the little red dot, and said to myself "That doesn't look right. Hmmmm, where is that?" Scanning the article, I found that Evesham is in Worcestershire, and that really didn't seem right. After all, Worcestershire is much closer to the western coast of England. Or so I thought. Then a lightbulb appeared over my fat head. I had used Wikipedia's map to memorize the historic counties of England. The historic counties. Of England. England does not include Wales. So now I have to un-learn the "fact" that Herefordshire, Shropshire, and parts of Gloucestershire are on the west coast of England.

1 comment:

Hugh Yeman said...

Uh... yeah! YEAH! That's exactly what I was thinking of!

It must've been hard, being King Offa: everyone always making jokes like "Get Offa the throne", or "Can't you make me a better Offa than that?"