My uncle in Reno laughed at me for buying a 1912 map of the Sahara with a river running through it, then we found the same phantom river on three other maps

Richard Shah · 2026-10-09T07:30:04.206294+00:00

He told me it was a printer's mistake and worth nothing, but after I pulled up a 1730 French chart and two 19th century German atlases with that same fake river in the exact same spot, he admitted mapmakers might have just copied each other's errors for 200 years, so now I want to know if anyone here collects these copycat mistakes on purpose.

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My uncle in Reno laughed at me for buying a 1912 map of the Sahara with a river running through it, then we found the same phantom river on three other maps | Collectors of Weird Maps - Topic Shares