Template:POTD/2008-09-27

Picture of the day
1571 Portuguese nautical chart
A pre-Mercator nautical chart of West Africa from 1571, by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado. It is done using the so-called "plane chart model", where observed latitudes and magnetic directions were plotted directly into the plane, with a constant scale, as if the Earth were flat.Map credit: Fernão Vaz Dourado