He also gave his name to the standard way in which world maps were represented (the Mercator projection).

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The Slovene retail chain Mercator bought many stores in ex-Yugoslav states, expecting the standard of living to rise as their countries got closer to EU membership.

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Cosmography is a term also associated with the Flemish cartographer, Mercator, who published his own atlas that included corrected versions of the maps first produced by Ptolemy.

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Cumulatively, these resulted in the famous projection map of Gerardus Mercator in 1569, a plan of the world that still forms the basis of schoolroom teaching and Google Maps.

WSJ: Lost in Our Maps: A History of Cartographic Catastrophes

In the second set, Mercator took first lead again and, with great team work inspired by Richard Grimes, were sneaking ahead.

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Still, prepaid debit cards targeted at teens haven't broadly caught on, says Tim Sloane, a vice president with Mercator Advisory Group, which researches the prepaid market.

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More increases are looming as card issuers respond to the new penalty-fee limits, says Ken Paterson, vice president of research at Mercator Advisory Group.

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Mercator's solution remains a boon to sailors to this day, even as it massively distorts the relative sizes of land masses such as Africa and Greenland.

WSJ: Lost in Our Maps: A History of Cartographic Catastrophes