This is the Earth, our Earth!

The MAPPARIUM- Impossible to capture in photos (or at least in one photo) …. but we tried!

Mary Baker Eddy was an American religious leader (she wrote Science & Health with key to the Scriptures in 1875) and the discoverer of Christian Science and founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist with branches now around the world. The Christian Science Monitor, since 1908 has been published here in Boston at “the Mother Shop” and is a respected global news source which has won seven Pulitzer Prizes.

How Do You See the World??? We visited the 3 story Mapparium, stained glass showing the world at one moment in time in 1935. The exhibits outside this incredible map room talk about humanity’s advancement since 1935. Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill designed the entire building as a newspaper empire, inspired by the globe in the New York Daily News building.

The Mapparium shows the entire Earth not distorted by its shape and our perspective as each area seems a different distance from us, which is how we “usually” see it on a globe from the OUTSIDE. This view is from the inside with the eye the same distance from every point on the map. We see how rally big Africa and Antarctica are and how crowded North America and Europe are near the North pole. Yes, the boundaries of countries have changed … a lot (no more Siam or Czechoslovakia) but Africa and Israel have not. The sound inside was very interesting since it’s a perfect sphere, in the center you can hear all around since the glass does not absorb sound but reflect sit back to you. You can hear a whisper from on end to the other. What a cool experience to have.. in particular we were literally a half hour off of the plane. Thanks Neal & Tina!Read more