Europe's map makers may have had an inkling of the Americas long before Columbus's voyage in 1492.
ECONOMIST: Modern man knows where he stands. His map tells him
Medieval Europe's map makers did not suppose that they knew the exact co-ordinates of Paradise, but they wanted to show that it was indeed on Earth, as holy writ and the church declared.
ECONOMIST: Modern man knows where he stands. His map tells him
But of course the truth is this story began centuries ago, when horsemen descended to the plains from a lost kingdom called Futa Djallon, long before Europe's map makers turned their minds to the niggling problem of how to fill those blank spaces.
The intrigue is reminiscent of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that drew the post-Napoleonic map of Europe.
The rejuvenated Rijksmuseum is back at the heart of Amsterdam, and it is time that you came back to this most creative of cities, which decorates the map of Europe so elegantly.
BBC: The renovated Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam wins rave reviews
In response to the first set of EU sanctions, in fact, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem had told a press gathering that Syria would "forget that Europe was on the map" and turn eastward for its business.
And if that were to happen, the map of Central Europe might become still more agreeably blurry.
Two years later the Soviet Union had splintered and the map of central and eastern Europe had been completely redrawn.
Europe was less a region on the map than a state of mind, and bundling as many countries as possible into a single week appealed to workers with precious few opportunities to travel.
It has got itself a fine place on the map, just across the Mediterranean from Europe, astride world shipping routes.
ECONOMIST: Slow, quick, quick, slow are the dance-steps of reform
But blaming Europe for where the axe falls when the aid map is announced next week is not a strategy likely to appeal to Mr Blair, who is trying to make Europe more popular.
"If Europe does not advance it will fall or even be wiped out from the world map, " Mr Hollande said.
Over the past three years, Microsoft has created a uniform, detailed map of the Continental United States and 17 countries in Western and Central Europe.
But a Royal visit should help to put the tech cluster on the map, and perhaps make the government's ambitions to turn the area into Europe's rival to Silicon Valley look slightly less fanciful.
One sweet new feature is the inclusion of a 2.6GB hard drive, which obviates the need to be switching SD cards when you need to change map sets (units will ship with a full set of street level maps of Europe).
ENGADGET: TomTom go 700 SatNav unit boasts Bluetooth, hard drive
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