Making Sense Of The World, One Map At A Time
Based on this popular post around the idea of how you can fit the population of the United States into various countries. The map above looks at how you could fit the population of North America into Europe, and still have several million people left over.
The map above simply shows the shade of red that appears on each country’s flag, assuming of course it has red on it. The data comes from here, which shows that 148 out of 192 countries (77%) have some red in their flags.
The reddest flags are:
Ever wonder what word most commonly appears in your State’s place names? Me neither, nevertheless the map above is really interesting. The overwhelming majority of states have the rather unoriginal ‘city’ as the most common word.
Ever sit on a beach and wonder what’s on the other side of the ocean? Well if you live anywhere in the Americas, the map above has your answer. It shows which countries are due east or west.
Perhaps most interesting countries on the map are Chile and Greenland, where it’s possible to sail right round the world and still end up in the same country.
Starting today Lithuania becomes the 19th member of the Eurozone. All countries that join the EU are supposed to work towards adopting the Euro (with a few exceptions discussed below). The map above shows which European countries are currently using the Euro. They are:
The US is the third most populous country on earth, with over 320 million people according the current U.S. Census Population Clock. Yet, only around 4.4% of the world’s people live in the country and considering it’s only the 180th most densely populated country on earth, it’s rather sparsely populated.
Moreover, if the US ever wanted to catch-up with China (most populated) or India (soon to be most populated), it would have to increase its population fourfold (1.2 billion+). Even then, this would still only make it the 89th most densely populated country on earth (assuming of course no population changes in any other country).
However, all this can be rather difficult to visualize. Wouldn’t it be easier to just see how the current US population fits into the rest of the world? Well the clever users of reddit have done just that. They’ve created all the maps on this page that help show how large (or not) America’s population really is.
Who doesn’t love flags or to use the technical term Vexillology? The map above simply matches European, North African and some Middle Eastern countries with their respective flags.
While most people are familiar with the famous Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, you probably don’t know about a similar Japanese attack 36 years earlier. The map above shows the battles of the relatively little known Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
The United States has a population that is nearly five times greater than the United Kingdom. Yet, the UK still has more people than the 27 least populated states combined. On the other hand, the UK has fewer people than the two most populous states.
The map above shows how each of these combinations would look. In red, you can see that the UK has more people than the following states combined:
The map above shows all countries whose capital was not their largest city, based on population, in 2010. This explains why South Sudan does not appear as a separate country, however if it did it would not be among the countries included (Juba is both the capital and largest city of South Sudan).
Here are a few of the more interesting facts about these countries and cities:
