Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Napoleon's Invasion of Russia

Napoleon's invasion of Russia

Reason: I was surprised to see that this image had never been nominated before, considering that it is a classic in the field of information design, and Tufte's assessment. I first came across this image years ago in Tufte's book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. He says on p. 40 of the book, "Minard's graphic tells a rich, coherent story with its multivariate data, far more enlightening than just a single number bouncing along over time. Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army's movement, and temperature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow".
Proposed caption: This 1861 diagram by Charles Joseph Minard illustrates the advance and retreat of Napoleon's army in Russia from 1812 to 1813. The thickness of the line indicates the size of the army. From left to right, the thick line on top shows the army crossing the Neman River with 422,000 men, advancing into Russian territory and stopping in Moscow with just 100,000 men. From right to left, the lower line shows the army returning west, including the disasterous crossing of the Berezina River. Only a small fraction of Napoleon's army, approximately 20,000 men, survived. The lower portion of the graph shows the temperature during the army's retreat, in degrees below freezing on the Réaumur scale. In his book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, statistician and information graphics designer Edward Tufte says this map "may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn."

Articles this image appears in: Information design, Scientific visualization, French invasion of Russia (1812), Information graphics, Victory disease, Russian Winter, Battle of Berezina, Charles Joseph Minard
Creator: Charles Joseph Minard

Support as nominator Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 07:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The graphic is, of course, worthy of an FP. But this scan is small and extremely hard to read. I think we could reasonably expect to get a better copy of it. Adam Cuerden ^talk 08:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because the writing is in French and we're running an English encyclopedia, also as Adam noted the writing is very small --Hadseys 13:45, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have found sharper versions but I need to make sure that there are no copyright problems. I'm going to move this to the Suspended Noms section while I investigate. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 19:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, sorry folks, I got so excited about this picture that I rushed to nominate it. I'm realizing now that the original includes some colour, and I can't find a high-quality colour version on Google so it will take me some time to get hold of one. I'll re-nominate then. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 06:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 00:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Expired nomination. Makeemlighter (talk) 00:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]