In November 1828, in the rough seas near Cape Horn, Thomas Burdwood of the British transport ship Kains discovered a small rocky island. Like most captains would, he named it Burdwood Island after himself.

In 1617, Joris Carolus was commissioned by the Noordsche Compagnie - a Dutch whaling cartel - to lead a voyage of discovery. The mission was apparently successful, with the discovery of two new islands. The first he named Nyeu Hollandt, while the other he named Opdams Eylandt.

The 'Binchichins' is a story of how one Scottish mountain became an entire mountain range, before disappearing from maps entirely. During the early 17th century, the original Gaelic name used for the mountain recognised today as Lochnagar was Beinn nan Chìochan (the hill of the paps/breasts).

📣 NEW BLOG POST Did German pirates beat Columbus to America? Sometime in the 1470s, King Christian I of Denmark hired two German privateers "at the request of his majesty of Portugal...to explore new countries and islands in the north".

Always remember to first check that the island you've just anchored to isn't a giant whale before lighting your evening fire. For more sailing advice and sea monsters from the Nordic seas join me on a short tour around Olaus Magnus' 1539 Carta Marina.

No map is safe from a cat's curiosity! Ultraviolet photography of this 17th-century Japanese map of Nagasaki has revealed the unsuspected paw prints of a cat.

What if the phantom islands of Frisland and Hy Brasil were real? You might get this map from B14hawk. #MapMonday Source: www.reddit.com/r/imaginarym...

📣 NEW BLOG POST In the sixteenth century, enormous man-eating monsters ruled the oceans. Nowhere else are these fear-inducing creatures better depicted than on the 1539 "Carta Marina" by Olaus Magnus.

While en route to the North Pole on a modern ice-going vessel, glaciologist Henry Patton reveals some of the crazy mapping mistakes and theories of what people used to believe lay hidden in this icy kingdom. 📽️ Editing by @media.elizaveta.no

Like a flat-earth conspiracy theory, Podesta is one phantom island that has refused to die, and has even recently been 'annexed'. Discovered by the aptly named Captain Pinocchio* in 1879 off the coast of Chile, it was supposedly 1 km in circumference. *Finocchio, according to some sources

The 'semblance' of an island, thirty miles long with high peaked mountains, was sighted by C.J. Nockells of the British sealing ship Emerald, in December 1821.

Mayda, with its many pseudonyms, is one of the most enduring phantom islands of the North Atlantic, though its origin is largely unknown. Its signature crescent shape first appears in 1367 with the label Brazir, with the more common name of Mayda appearing only later in 1553.

When the 'Vinland Map' was announced to the world in 1965, it turned the known history of transatlantic exploration on its head. Was the depiction of a landmass southwest of Greenland, clearly labelled "Vinlanda Insula", proof of Viking expansion into the New World centuries before Columbus?

Parts of the Persian Gulf were still a mystery to western geographers during the 18th century, particularly along its western shore. The most egregious mistakes included the absence of the Qatar Peninsula, seemingly replaced by Samak Island. 📖 mapmyths.com#samak

While fleeing Macau on charges of illegal trading in 1589, João da Gama sighted land northeast of Japan. His reports were initially added to early Portuguese maps as a series of small islands, but later, 'Gamaland' ballooned in size across the North Pacific. 📖 mapmyths.com#de-gama's-land

Denia and Marseveen first appeared on charts from Joannes van Keulen in 1680, supposedly sighted by Dutch Company ships. In all likelihood, this pair of islands is probably an early sighting and duplication of Marion and Prince Edward islands, around 1,500 km to the east. 📖 mapmyths.com#marseveen

The South Shetland Islands, the first discovery south of 60°S, were quickly exploited by sealers in the 1820s. Troubled with fog and ice, the charts they produced for the British Admiralty were of varying accuracy. One phantom that slipped through was Huson's/Middle Island.

The first map of Japan in a European atlas appeared in 1595 and curiously also included a carrot-shaped island off the coast of China: 'Corea insula'. Little was known of the Far East during the 16th century, so Korea's insular nature was largely speculative.

#OTD in 1825, Benjamin Morrell - the "biggest liar in the Pacific" according to his contemporaries - sighted a new island west of Hawaii. He named it Byer's Island after the ship’s owner. Early the next morning, another island was stumbled upon. This he named after himself - Morrell's Island.

The legend of El Dorado, a mythical city of gold somewhere in the jungles of South America, ignited the imaginations and greed of European explorers for centuries. Intertwined with this legend was Lake Parime, the vast, inland sea upon which the golden city was believed to sit. A 🧵

#OTD in 1892, US explorer Robert Peary looked out over Navy Cliff in NE Greenland and incorrectly determined the island was split in two by a giant fjord. The race to prove that 'Peary Channel' was a myth would have disastrous consequences for subsequent Danish expeditions.

New short below on the disastrous Polaris Expedition, murder, and the myth of President Land 🎬

In 1817, Captain Hammant claimed to have seen an island at 36°27'S, 127°2'E. Hammant further noted they saw Kangaroo Island 3 hours later, which, being 150 leagues away, made the position of his discovery very doubtful. Still, 'Hammet' Island would survive on maps of Australia for nearly a century.

When Herald Island was discovered in 1849 during the search for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin, Captain Kellett reported seeing 'extensive and high land' no less than 60 miles from their ship. The high peaks were named Plover Island, yet it was just a mirage. 📖 mapmyths.com#plover-island

Love perusing a good map? www.openculture.com/2023/12/the-... The University of Chicago Press has made available online — at no cost – five volumes of The History of Cartography. What a tempting rabbit hole! 😍 #history #cartography #mapmaking #maps #historicalmaps

In 1708 a letter emerged recounting a fantastic voyage by Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte to the NW coast of N America and into a great inland sea. This 'Sea of the West' became incorporated into many 18th-century maps. Yet, Fonte and his story were entirely fictional. 📖 mapmyths.com#sea-of-the-w...

The release of Apple Maps with iOS 6 in 2012 was an unparalleled disaster. Of the many mapping errors included in the Google replacement, one of the worst was for drivers heading to Mildura in Australia.

In 1699, Gemelli Careri recounted the tragic tale of Donna Maria de Lajara, a young Spanish woman returning to New Spain across the Pacific. She threw herself into the sea after not having the patience to endure the inconveniences of the passage any longer. archive.org/details/dli....

Incomplete mapping of Australia's and Papua New Guinea's coastlines led some 18th-century cartographers to speculate that the two islands were joined. Some also amalgamated Queiros' 1606 discovery of Vanuatu into the eastern portions of this phantom land bridge. 📖 mapmyths.com#carpentaria

It’s #MapMonsterMonday! Jodocus Hondius’s c1640 map of the Americas features a couple of beasts prowling the Pacific. Also interesting is the inset connecting Australia and Antarctica as one. This map is held by the Library of Congress.

Mercator produced the first map solely dedicated to the Arctic regions, posthumously published in 1595. While a product of its time, the Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio is laden with features now known to be entirely mythical or significantly misrepresented. A 🧵

20 May 1570: Gilles Coppens de Diest at #Antwerp published 53 maps #otd created by Abraham Ortelius under the title Theatrum Orbis Terrarum [Theatre of the World] this work is considered to be the first modern atlas.

During the doomed Polaris Expedition from 1871-73 - the first Arctic mission of its kind to be funded in its entirety by the US govt. - land was sighted far north of Greenland at ~84°N. President Land subsequently appeared on a map of Greenland featured in the Illustrated London News in 1875.

Pepys Island came into existence during the 1600s, seemingly out of an attempt to flatter the Chief Secretary of the British Admiralty, Samuel Pepys (also of diary fame). The mispostioned phantom was probably the Falkland Islands 4° farther south. 📖 mapmyths.com#pepys-island

One of the four circular books of Salamanca University Library, donated in the eighteenth century. Its depiction of Greenland shows the continued influence of the sixteenth-century fictional travelogue of the Zeno brothers, in that one island is identified as the non-existent Freesland.

In 1978, Peter Fletcher, the chairman of the Michigan State Highway Commission and an avid University of Michigan football fan, snuck two fake towns into the latest edition of the state map. Goblu and Beatosu did not go unnoticed, and a reprint was soon ordered. 📖 mapmyths.com#beatosu-and-...

Abandoned and presumed dead in the Arctic - our new short explains the sacrifices made to disprove Peary Channel in northern Greenland over 100 years ago.

Today is St. George's day, slayer of dragons, rescuer of damsels in distress. While the legend 'Here be dragons' doesn't appear on any maps (sorry), dragons do, here are some from a fantastic Spanish portolan atlas, made sometime between 1550 and 1600. @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social

Over 1000 years ago, a Viking caught in a storm off NW Iceland saw land to the west. This mirage of Greenland was mischarted as 'Gunnbjörn's Skerries' on 17th-century maps. Today, the mountain he likely saw - Greenland's highest - is named after this wayward sailor. 📖 mapmyths.com#gunnbjorn's-...

Rapa Nui was discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722. James Cook also visited the island in 1774, where he learnt its native name as 'Waihou'. Waihou would go on to appear as a duplicate island 5 degrees farther north from Easter Island on some 19th-century maps.

Map myth in a minute - the legend of Fusang and a fascinating 'what-if' in the history of exploration. Full story: myths.rhewlif.xyz/blog/fusang

Buried within an ancient Chinese text lies the tale of an epic voyage to Fusang in the 5th century AD. Was a Buddhist missionary really the first to put America on the map? myths.rhewlif.xyz/blog/fusang/

#OTD in 1527 Abraham Ortelius was born. He would go on to create the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. His beautiful maps, however, contained a plethora of interesting map myths..e.g., River Niger flowing the wrong way, Korea as an island, and numerous fabled islands in the Atlantic.

Isle Phelipeaux within Lake Superior was only identified as a phantom island when surveyors began staking out the new US border with Canada during the 1820s. 📖 myths.rhewlif.xyz#Isle%20Pheli...

'...prone to exaggeration and miscalculation, to which he frequently added a little plagiarism and a lot of fraud.' A withering description of Benjamin Morrell, who 'discovered' such map myths as Morrell's Island, Morrell's Land, and Byer's Island. 📖 myths.rhewlif.xyz#New%20South%...

The placement of Tamana (Gilbert Islands) north of the equator is one of the few map myths to result from not one but two cartographic blunders. 📖 myths.rhewlif.xyz#Tamana

The eyes of a man found after more than two years alone with his comrade in the remotest parts of Greenland. His rescue brought news to the world that a major map myth had been finally busted. Read the story full of tragedies and perseverance on our blog: myths.rhewlif.xyz/blog/peary-c...

The eyes of a man found after more than two years alone with his comrade in the remotest parts of Greenland. His rescue brought news to the world that a major map myth had been finally busted. Read the story full of tragedies and perseverance on our blog: myths.rhewlif.xyz/blog/peary-c...

Ilha de Gonçalo Álvares was discovered by the Portuguese in 1505. The island was 'rediscovered' by British captain Charles Gough in 1732, though incorrectly placed it 400 miles away. Despite this duplication, Gough Island became the adopted name on modern maps. 📖 myths.rhewlif.xyz#Diego%20Alva...