Eartha, the Largest Rotating Globe in the World is in a Small New England Town

The town of Yarmouth, Maine is a typical small New England town. With only 8,300 residents and a main street lined with historical homes and mom and pop businesses, Yarmouth seems like it could be right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But there is one landmark in Yarmouth that is not typical of sleepy American towns: Eartha, the world's largest rotating globe.

DeLorme is a business that provides mapping products. Eartha was designed by the CEO of the company, David DeLorme, and is housed at the companies Yarmouth headquarters. Eartha is 3D model of the world that moves to simulate the actual movement of the earth.

In 1999, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed Eartha's title as the biggest rotating globe, and no one has beaten that title yet. Just over 41 feet in diameter and weighing 5,600 pounds, Eartha was bigger than the world's previous largest globe, the Globe of Peace, by more than 9 feet. Incidentally, the Globe of Peace, which is located in Pesaro, Italy, was stationary. Eartha was built to a scale of 1:1,000,000, and a rotation is completed each minute .

It was designed in such a way as to mimic what one would see if looking at the earth from space. Eartha took two years to build, and the globe is detailed right down to major cities and roadways. Even the depths of the oceans are accurately represented. One would need 214 CD's to hold Eartha's 140 gigabyte database.

Visitors are welcome to see Eartha for themselves at the DeLorme headquarters where she resides in a glass atrium. The globe is open to the public during normal business and there is a gift shop next to the atrium.

If you do decide to pay a visit to Eartha, be sure to also stop by the Yarmouth Historical Society where you can learn about the "300 years of human history'' that has taken place in the town .

Many small towns have a claim to fame, but only a few have an actual Guinness Book of World Records title that is unlikely to be broken anytime in the near future. Even if someone does build a larger rotating globe, it is unlikely that it will include the attention to detail that makes Eartha such a wonder.