On December 2, 1594, German cartographer, philosopher and mathematician Gerardus Mercator passed away. He is best known for his work in cartography, particular the world map of 1569 based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines. He was the first to use the term Atlas for a collection of maps.
On September 22, 1593, Swiss-born German master engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian der Ältere was born. He is best known for his 21-volume set of the Topographia Germaniae, which includes numerous town plans and views, as well as maps of most countries and a World Map.
More than 550,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable wrap around the globe to deliver e-mails, Web pages, other electronic communications and phone calls from one continent to another at the speed of light. As cables make landfall, they connect to landing stations that route the voice, data and Internet traffic to domestic networks or forward the signal to another undersea network that carries the data onto their final international destination.