The map above is Francis Galton’s earliest known isochronic map, published in 1881 for the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, illustrates travel times from London, United Kingdom, to various parts of the world, measured in days.

The map assumes favorable travel conditions, prearranged land transport, and the use of contemporary travel methods within a reasonable cost.

From the map itself:

[Read more…]

Map created by StatistaThe map above shows a simplified map of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade including the total number of people enslaved and their destination country. (Based on modern borders).

The underlying data comes from Slave Voyages, which has more detailed maps, from the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade a couple of which you can see below:

[Read more…]

Map created by WordtipsThe map above looks at what sound cats make when they’re meowing in most of the countries of the world. While Meow is the most common in the English speaking world it’s not the mot common globally.

From the map:

Cats may be highly independent creatures, but their language is quite similar throughout the world.

The majority of cat sounds begin with an ‘m,’ including the familiar Meow (Australia, Kenya and Micronesia, to name but a few).

There’s Miau in Nicaragua, Myaco in Nepal, and Miu Miu in Bangladesh.

True to form, however, some felines will just do their own thing, including those in North and South Korea (Yaong) and Malaysia (Ngiau).

Top 5 Most Common Cat Sounds:

1. Miau / Miauw: 38 countries
2. Meow: 22 countries
3. Muwaa: 20 countries
4. Miaou: 9 countries
5. Mjau: 5 countries

Here are the sounds in various languages around the world according to Language Pro.

• Afrikaans: miaau
• Albanian: mjau
• Arabic (Algeria): miaou miaou
• Bengali: meu-meu
• Catalan: meu, meu
• Chinese (Mandarin): miao miao
• Croatian: mijau
• Danish: mjav
• Dutch: miauw
• English: meow
• Esperanto: miaw
• Estonian: näu
• Finnish: miau, kurnau
• French: miaou
• German: miau
• Greek: niaou
• Hebrew: miyau
• Hindi: mya:u, mya:u:
• Hungarian: miau
• Icelandic: mjá
• Indonesian: ngeong
• Italian: miao
• Japanese: nyaa
• Korean: (n)ya-ong
• Norwegian: mjau
• Polish: miau
• Portuguese: miau
• Russian: myau
• Slovene: mijau
• Spanish (Spain, Argentina): miau
• Swedish: mjau
• Thai: meow meow (with high tone)
• Turkish: miyauv, miyauv
• Ukrainian: myau
• Vietnamese: meo-meo

Also see: Dog Bark Sounds: How Different Countries & Languages Represent Dog Sounds in Words

How do you say it?

Map created by WordtipsThe map above looks at what sound dogs make when they’re barking in most of the countries of the world. While Woof, Woof is the most common in the English speaking world it’s not the mot common globally.

[Read more…]

The map above is based off of a Q4 2024 Yougov Survey asking British adults if they’d ever heard of the country and if they had, whether or not they had a positive opinion about it.

Now just because a country has a positive low score doesn’t necessarily mean British adults dislike a country, but could simply mean they have no opinion about it one way or another.

Personally, I don’t have strong views on Palau, Comoros or Nauru.

You can see the full survey results below.

[Read more…]

Map found on redditThe map above shows how the term for carbonated sweet soft drinks in different parts of the United States has shifted over time.

In 1947 the term Soda, Pop and Coke (which confusingly refers to all soft drinks, not just Coca Cola) were all fairly even distributed in the United States.

[Read more…]

Map created by reddit user dxrknxrth

The map above shows the modern remnants of the Central Pangean Mountain Range in Scandinavia, Scotland, Greenland, the United States and Africa.

More about them below:

[Read more…]

These 3 wonderful maps are all the work of Alex at Vividmaps (you can see an integrative version on his site).

They show the lone islands of voting support for Harris, Biden and Clinton in their respective US Presidential elections against Donald Trump visualised as topography maps rather than standard election maps.

Here are the ones for Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016:

[Read more…]

Created by Kevin ReinhardtThe amazing map above shows the world only using using airline flight routes. The original project dates back to 2014, but still looks incredible today.

Here are some notable observations and trends based on such maps:

[Read more…]