It’s always cool to see those. With kids I have fun to asking who is good at finding places on maps, before putting up one of these T-in-O style maps and asking them to find the United States.
I think al-Idrisi put Africa on top in all his maps?
I think so…
In the same way that Europeans used to put the Middle East on top? Put the most important reference at the highest point? He was from North Africa, and it was a source of wealth? For Europeans, it was Jerusalem?
Yep. I think showing that to kids is a great reminder that maps are always political, and not necessarily true representations of what land actually looks like.
For sure. It’s always a fun discussion. “What is a map for?” “Finding things!!” “Really?! Who here is good at finding things on a map? Come on up and I’ll put a map up on the screen.”
Sometimes this is preceded with a picture of a McDonald’s advertisement, asking who goes to McDonald’s, does the Big Mac ever look like this? Why not? Yes, it’s an advertisement!
Then: OK, what about this? What is trying to advertise? How is it “not real?”
So we still talk of “orienting” our maps, even though we now align them with North rather than East.
A south-on-top map can be rather disorienting. 
A deeply flawed article, but lots of interesting historical trivia!
Black History Month begins today in the US, so here are articles on that topic from TheGrio and The Root.
Also, more on the 1619 Project:
Willa Brown was awesome! If you enjoy the history of the early aviatrices, check out also Katherine Sui Fun Cheung.
Neat!
A question on what we should preserve to help historians of the future understand their past… specifically, with regards to fanfic…
Now let’s imagine that we could discover a lost body of ordinary people’s writing from 100 or 300 or 500 years ago.
The degree to which the unfiltered narrative often exposes that which the official narrative suppresses always takes me aback. I’ll admit that those narratives, curated by diligent historians, have led me to make major changes in my life.
Whole religions, including one currently influential in the American right, have been founded on fan fiction. 
