Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
An area larger than India and if it were an independent country today it would be the 7th largest by land area.
It was also almost completely controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, the oldest company in North America, or at least it was until it announced it was likely going bankrupt in April 2025, ending it’s 355 year history.
More about it below:
Although it’s got some pretty notable misses like Montreal-style bagels (smoked meat is great), Donair and of course Kraft Dinner (although that’s a Canada wide thing).
As a Canadian expat living in the UK here are my top 5 Canadian foods I miss:
And before looking at the map I would not have had Morocco as doing so before France.
The UK would finally recognise the United States as being independent in 1783 following the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
From the map creator:
From the notes on the map by Cornell:
The map above shows which of the 10 biggest cities in the world is closest to you (of course there’s a decent chance you may even live in one of them).
The author has gone with the 2018 estimates by the United Nations for their list of the 10 biggest.
The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area and has a list of 81 cities with a population of over 5 million as you can see below:
The map above shows what percentage of Europeans think their government is hiding a cure for cancer.
It comes from Eurobarometer’s 2025 report on European citizens’ knowledge and attitudes towards science and technology.
The question they asked was the following:
To put that in some comparison the Hiroshima bomb was only about 15 kilotons.
Here’s more about them and their nuclear weapons program:
Here’s a little more about each of them:
The map above shows which countries use Celsius for measuring outdoor temperatures and which still use Fahrenheit.
According to World Population Review the following 19 countries use Fahrenheit (often in conjunction with Celsius):
In the UK this is known by a variety of names including: