Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
The mesmerizing map below was created by the scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It shows the migratory patterns of 118 bird species throughout the Americas.
Each dot represents the average of location of one bird species for each day of the year.
The map above shows how the Soviet Union thought World War 3 might play out in Europe.
The red mushroom clouds represent planned nuclear strikes on cities and targets in central Europe and the blue mushroom clouds represent the anticipated NATO response.
The map above shows the location of armed groups (in green) and the areas with the number of internally displaced people (in purple) in the Eastern Congo.
The map was put together by the Council on Foreign Relations as part of their Eastern Congo InfoGuide Presentation.
The map above was created by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, who was a Pakistani nationalist and is often credited with coming up with the name ‘Pakistan.’
The brilliant isochrone world map above shows how long it takes to get from London to any other point in the world in 2016.
And reimagining of the original isochrone map: Travel Times From London In 1881: The First Known Isochronic Map By Francis Galton
It was created by the team at Rome2rio, who specialise in helping people get anywhere on earth, and is an update to the famous 1914 map by cartographer and geographer John George Bartholomew (see below)
The map above was created by the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign and highlights the huge risk to the British economy if it votes to leave the EU.
At risk are EU signed free trade deals with 60+ countries (covering an area far larger than the British Empire). If the UK were to leave, it would have to start from square one and renegotiate new free trade deals with each and every one.
While the Jackson Pollock style map of The Situation in Syria above is obviously not meant to be taken literally, it does a illustrates just how chaotic the situation remains.
If you have a fear of flying you should skip this map because it shows the locations of the largest plane crashes between 1985-2015.
The map above presents a very short history of colonialism around the world from 1492-2008 in one simple GIF. Interestingly, it doesn’t limit itself to European colonialism but also includes the colonial empires of the United States, Russia/Soviet Union and Japan.