To be very precise, on this day Geert de Kremer was born – he will become known as Mercator later when he translates his surname from German into the noble Latin. Mankind owes to Mercator cartographic projections now widely used for nautical maps, the name America which he used for both continents of the New World, and most importantly, the first Atlas. Published in the late 16th century, a model collection of geographical maps was decorated with an image of the Titan Atlas. Since then, we’ve been referring to map books with this mighty name. However, there is another opinion – Atlas was the name of the mythical king of Libya who had allegedly made a celestial globe. Only Chronos knows whether Mercator got this word from the earth or from the sky but we picked it up and have been using it. Even though we don’t recall Mercator that often.