Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
SOCIETY ADMITS WORLD CHANGING
A lone man, armed with 400-grit sandpaper, wiped the Soviet Union off the globe Friday."Having been born in the generation of the Cold War, this is kind of fun," said cartographer Richard Rogers, reaching up from a perch on his ladder to change the National Geographic Society's giant world globe.
The globe in the society's headquarters displays the world to thousands of schoolchildren, tourists and other visitors annually. And it stands as a symbol of the intricate maps compiled and published by the Geographic.
The Soviet Union won't be replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States, the general term for the collection of new nations replacing the former Communist monolith.
Instead, the globe will simply show the independent nations that are rising from the breakup of the Soviet Union, said spokeswoman Barbara Hand Fallon.
"I guess this is the first time in history, at least of our lives, that we've seen 17 new nations born all at once," said Rogers. "It's kind of a momentous occasion."
In addition to the breakup of the Soviet Union, he was also dividing Yugoslavia into three parts.
The 11-foot diameter, 1,550-pound globe was completed in late 1988, replacing an earlier version that needed almost no changes in its years on the job.
Geographic officials also are updating their world atlas.
When it came out at the end of 1990, they were proud of the fact that they had managed to include the merger of East Germany and West Germany. Now, more than 70 maps in the volume have to be updated just to remove the name Soviet Union, Fallon said.
Changing the massive globe is the first public step, and Rogers was hard at work on that Friday.
Turkmenistan was the first new country on the globe, arriving at 10:07 a.m. EST. Uzbekistan followed just seven minutes later, and Georgia had joined them by 10:30 a.m.
Then it was time to start on the big name. His right hand reached up from the perch, the sandpaper scraped, the cameras whirred and clicked, and the SOVIET UNION became the SOVIET UNI.