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Japanese world map, early XIXth century (from the Library of Congress). Quite remarkable is the exaggerated size of Japan, in the center of the map; also, the illustrated guide to foreign people that accompanies the map. I’m curious about the legend, since I don’t read Japanese.

Drawing of Jupiter, from Nouvelles découvertes dans le globe de Jupiter faites à l’observatoire royal, by Jean-Dominique Cassini (1690)

Old map of Chennai: Madraz et le Fort St. Georges pris par les François commandés par Mr. Mahé de la Bourdonnais, le 21 septembre 1746 (from Gallica)

Rhinoceros, from Buffon’s Natural History (1784)

Cover from a 1952 French edition of Olaf Stapledon’s “Odd John”

Typus obscurandae Telluris in Eclipsi Solis, about the solar eclipse of 15th September 1727 from Observations mathématiques, astronomiques, géographiques, chronologiques et physiques, tirées des anciens livres chinois, ou faites nouvellement aux Indes et à la Chine, par les Pères de la compagnie de Jésus published in Paris between 1729 and 1732. Look at the same map on the NASA website.

For a while it has been the fashion to draw the map of the Netherlands in the shape of a lion. Amsterdam is below the ear.

The Red Riding Hood. A tale about a predator that first appears to be gentle, and a young girl wearing a blood-coloured cap, red like the innocence (the virginity) she’s about to lose in the wolf’s bed. The sexual undertext is obvious, and was obvious to Perrault himself, and Tex Avery was not too far from its obscure meaning in his cartoons.

Une Perm’ au Casino Hermann-Goering

Façade de l’Ecole Militaire, côté du Champ de Mars, Paris, 1840