On the day of his second inauguration, Donald Trump pulled out his big black Sharpie and scribbled out the Gulf of Mexico, ...

What to do? He decided that a magnificent gift—a lavish map of the world—might maneuver him into the new king’s good graces. D’Annebault hired Pierre Desceliers, one of the best ...

Flat, two-dimensional maps can look different because the world is actually curved. This means map-makers need to make compromises when drawing maps. These different map representations are called ...

Alberto Cantino, an Italian spy, acquired a Portuguese map showing stunning finds in the New World. This story appears in the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine.