Interesting  I know this started off as a joke, but it would be quite possible for us actually implement some sort of tracking system, if there was an authoritative web service available for a given article subject. For example, if the paddle steamer registered with Google Latitude, it would not at all be beyond the wit of man to create a template {{coord url}} that would use the access of that URL, either Mediawiki server-side or JS client-side, to fill in the coordinates on the page.