Haha I loved it too so looked into it: In December 1942 U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, acting on a suggestion from General Dwight Eisenhower, sent identical fifty-inch, 750-pound globes to both Roosevelt and Churchill as Christmas presents. It was especially useful for coordinating strategy and gauging relative distances over water, a crucial factor in allocating scarce shipping resources while planning grand strategy. The giant globe—which was believed to be the largest and most accurate printed globe of its time— took over 50 geographers, cartographers, and draftsmen from the Geographic Division of the Office of Strategic Services to compile the information to make the globe. The globe was constructed by the Weber Costello Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois. At 1/10,000,000th the size of the earth, it was large enough to contain over 17,000 place names. The globe consists of two wooden interlocking halves pasted over with printed paper gores. The globe rests on a series of rubber balls set within a steel stand, which allowed the President and Prime Minister to rotate it in any direction.
OHSONOFABITCH Not dat globe but DAT GLOBE. Literally. My great aunt Marge was the curator of the FDR Museum and Library (ironic, as she was a lifelong booster of Reagan and lived to a hundred-and-flipping-three). We visited when I was in like 7th grade. And I fell in love with literally that globe. It's probably the source of my lust for maps. Literally. The one in the photo. Which is why I can tell you that you can buy a 40-inch... ...but if you want a 50-inch it's custom.
So jealous. I am the kind of guy that still buys paper maps wherever I go. And keeps them forever. If I only had an extra $15K laying around to spend on a globe my life would be complete.
Not the CIA but I have always really liked the Bigot Map used for the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach East. Bigot was just a code word with no meaning.
