Gall-Peters projection world map

The Mercator projection planisphere, created by the geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, distorts the size of the land to a large extent. This creates the so-called "Greenland problem", where landmasses furthest from the equator appear much larger than they really are. Africa is actually 14 times larger than Greenland, but if you look at a Mercator projection map it seems the opposite.