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Went to Crate and Barrel yesterday w/my mother and sister. My sister was looking for engagement presents for two young women she knows. The three of us wound up going in different directions in the store, which was good, because I stopped within thirty feet of the entrance and just boggled...
See, the store had bookshelves for sale and had chosen to decorate one set with a lamp, some knickknacks, and a few globes. I have made it a habit to check globes over and see if I can't spot a geographic designation that betrays the globe's age. Generally this means I check Vietnam first, then Korea, then spin the globe around (turning it eastward) until it hits Europe, where I check for the presence or absence of West/East Germany, the Baltic states, and the various nations of the Balkans. Yes, I know that the European stuff happened more recently, but I prefer my globes to be old. The changes in names in the Indochina and Korean peninsulas happened before I was old enough to remember (in the case of Vietnam) and before I was born (Korea), and therefore those changes are more interesting. I approached this globe at Crate and Barrel having seen from a distance that it looked battered. I expected to see North and South Vietnam.
It said Indochina. I blinked and looked north. Korea.
I turned the globe a little. Tibet was marked on the globe. There was no Pakistan - the area was marked Baluchistan, and if I peered closely I could find a minor note saying 'the region of Pakistan' or something similar. No Bangladesh either. Thailand was marked Siam. I turned it a little further. . .
Good lord, Africa was still almost entirely colonial states! I hadn't seen those names since my battered old copy of Exotic Tropical Fish (copyright 1936 or so) had fallen apart! I was entirely too fascinated by this prospect for my own good and quickly looked to see if Alaska was marked something like 'territory of Alaska', but alas, there was no such designation. Didn't mean that wasn't the case at the time of the globe's printing, it just meant that it didn't say. The countries of South America looked much, much more like what I had had to memorize in preschool (I went to a Montessori school - I was three, perhaps four, when I learned the names of all the countries in South America, so you can understand how irritated I was years later to find out that Dutch Guiana had gone and changed its name). I didn't even bother to look at Germany or the Balkans; I just kept looking over the African and Asian name changes, and finally out of curiosity spun the globe around until it hit the Middle East. Ah, there, that fixed the date a bit: the big saddle-shaped country was named Iran, but had the subtitle of "(Persia)".
Absolutely fascinating. I almost sought out a store employee with an offer to buy the globe, but came to my senses in time.
See, the store had bookshelves for sale and had chosen to decorate one set with a lamp, some knickknacks, and a few globes. I have made it a habit to check globes over and see if I can't spot a geographic designation that betrays the globe's age. Generally this means I check Vietnam first, then Korea, then spin the globe around (turning it eastward) until it hits Europe, where I check for the presence or absence of West/East Germany, the Baltic states, and the various nations of the Balkans. Yes, I know that the European stuff happened more recently, but I prefer my globes to be old. The changes in names in the Indochina and Korean peninsulas happened before I was old enough to remember (in the case of Vietnam) and before I was born (Korea), and therefore those changes are more interesting. I approached this globe at Crate and Barrel having seen from a distance that it looked battered. I expected to see North and South Vietnam.
It said Indochina. I blinked and looked north. Korea.
I turned the globe a little. Tibet was marked on the globe. There was no Pakistan - the area was marked Baluchistan, and if I peered closely I could find a minor note saying 'the region of Pakistan' or something similar. No Bangladesh either. Thailand was marked Siam. I turned it a little further. . .
Good lord, Africa was still almost entirely colonial states! I hadn't seen those names since my battered old copy of Exotic Tropical Fish (copyright 1936 or so) had fallen apart! I was entirely too fascinated by this prospect for my own good and quickly looked to see if Alaska was marked something like 'territory of Alaska', but alas, there was no such designation. Didn't mean that wasn't the case at the time of the globe's printing, it just meant that it didn't say. The countries of South America looked much, much more like what I had had to memorize in preschool (I went to a Montessori school - I was three, perhaps four, when I learned the names of all the countries in South America, so you can understand how irritated I was years later to find out that Dutch Guiana had gone and changed its name). I didn't even bother to look at Germany or the Balkans; I just kept looking over the African and Asian name changes, and finally out of curiosity spun the globe around until it hit the Middle East. Ah, there, that fixed the date a bit: the big saddle-shaped country was named Iran, but had the subtitle of "(Persia)".
Absolutely fascinating. I almost sought out a store employee with an offer to buy the globe, but came to my senses in time.
