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1603Sir Walter Raleigh's notes
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1604First English dictionary
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1605Letter about Guy Fawkes
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1605Gunpowder Plot conspirators
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1605The head of Guy Fawkes
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1608Shakespeare's King Lear
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1610The Globe Theatre
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1611King James Bible
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1617Surgeons' tools
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1623Chinese globe
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1623Shakespeare's First Folio
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1636Lotus Sutra
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1640Witch hunting
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1643English Civil War scenes
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1649Execution of Charles I
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1649Agreement of the People
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1649Charles I's executioner
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1650Early A - Z of London
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1650Advert for a quack doctor
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1660Oliver Cromwell as the Devil
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1665A cure for the Plague
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1665Robert Hooke, Micrographia
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1666Great Fire of London map
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1666Great Fire of London
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1666Wren's plans after the fire
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1669Theatrical figures
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1674Dictionary of criminal slang
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1674Games and pastimes
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1679Habeas Corpus Act
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1679Map of the moon
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1684A London Rhinoceros
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1685Henry Purcell
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1690Locke's Two Treatises
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1693East India Company
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1693Account of a shipwreck
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1698Map of South America
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Intro
This is the first scientific map of the moon, and was produced in Paris by the famous astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. Working in the 1670s, Cassini used a telescope to make careful observations of the moon’s pock-marked surface. Thanks to the map, 17th century European scientists had a greater understanding of the moon than they did of much of the Earth’s surface.
If you look very carefully at the map, you will find a ‘Moon Maiden’ hiding behind one of the craters. It seems that either Cassini, or the map’s famous engraver Claude Mellan, included the detail, believing that this tiny part of the moon’s surface looked like a beautiful woman.
Shelfmark: Maps K.Top.1.88.
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