Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
The illustration above shows just how big the British Empire was at its territorial peak in the early 1920s. At that time it covered 35.5 million sq km (13.71 million sq mi), which represents 23.84% of the Earth’s land area or equivalent to 93.67% of the Moon’s surface area (37.9 million sq km).
The map above potentially shows one of the world’s longest uninterrupted walks from Cape Town, South Africa to Magadan, Russia a distance of 22,387km (13,910 miles).
The map above shows many (but not all of) of the ships sunk during World War 2. The map was created by Rean Monfils and combines the Geographic Information System (GIS) database of Asian Pacific shipwrecks with the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean (AMIO) WWII shipwreck database.
The map above is one of our favourites. It shows (or rather doesn’t show) West Berlin in 1988. It was published in East Germany just one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While it’s well known that the mercator projection distorts the world, the maps here show very clearly by how much. Countries close to the equator barely change, whereas countries further north shrink dramatically.
The maps are all the work of climate data scientist @neilrkaye.
You can see an animation below:
The map above shows the largest self-reported national identity group by share of population for each local authority area of the United Kingdom in the 2011 Census.
The map above shows which countries have claimed to the the successor to the Roman Empire at some point in their history (so called Third Rome). Learn more about each below.
The map above shows some of the most popular superheroes from comics and film who protect New York City. It also explores the areas in which they either live, hide out, or roam for criminals.
How do you pronounce the word scone?
If you live in Scotland you almost certainly pronounce it in a way that rhymes with “gone”, whereas if you live in Ireland you’re far more likely to pronounce it so it rhymes with “cone.” And in England and Wales, well let’s just say it’s complicated.
At 2,824 kilometres, the Amur River (known in China as the Heilong Jiang or “Black Dragon River”) is the 10th longest in the world. For much of its length it forms the border between Russia and China.
At its confluence with the Zeya are two cities of roughly equal size which face each other across the Amur, less than 600 metres apart.
These are the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, administrative capital of the Amur region, and the Chinese city of Heihe in Heilongjiang province.