|Prime Minister Churchill with the globe presented to him by the United States War Department, Christmas 1942
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 Churchill and Roosevelt as Christmas presents. During the war it was especially useful to Roosevelt, Churchill, and others for gauging relative distances over water, a crucial factor in allocating scarce shipping resources while planning grand strategy.
From "The President's Globe" by Arthur H. Robinson in Imago Mundi: The International Journal for The History of Cartography, vol. 49. London: Imago Mundi, Ltd., 1997. Copyprint. General Collections, Library of Congress (1.4)
World War II