23 is Number One!

MARCO. . .


                                                    . . .POLO! (named Madagascar)

Marco Polo in stunning 360m resolution (the "m" is for mosaic).

     Sometime in the 13th century, Marco Polo came upon the island of Madagascar. Apparently he miscalculated a tad, and thought he was in Somalia, in the port of Mogadishu. When I say "a tad," I mean he was actually around 2,000 kilometers off track. When recording his visit in his memoirs, as so often happens across language barriers, things got a bit jumbled. Polo ended up writing: "Madageiscar."

     Now, there are some discrepancies here, and it seems there's no definitive evidence he ever visited the island, and was perhaps *actually* in Somalia, but thought he was on some other, massive island. In any case, since the local inhabitants had no cohesive word for the island at that time, the name stuck.

     A Portuguese explorer, Diogo Dias, who definitely, actually arrived on the island in the 15th century gave it the name, "Sao Lourenco" (St. Lawrence). However, by that time, "Madagascar" had become popularized across maps. Sailors would apparently also refer to Madagascar as the "Island of the Moon."

And on that note, here's a picture from last night's lunar eclipse.