Tag: Long view
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Lost at sea: is the Bermuda Triangle worse than its traffic?
I placed 472 famous disappearances on the map and tested every sea against its shipping. The Bermuda Triangle has 8 against 2.8 expected, but its neighbours run just as high, and most of its famous cases happened outside it.
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Where inventions came from
I mapped the world’s inventions from the first stone tools to the web: farming began in 11 places, writing in 4, and the centre of invention moved from Mesopotamia to China, Europe and North America. The open record of it is 91% Europe and North America.
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Capitals that moved: every capital move since 1500, and how far each went
184 moves of a capital since 1500, from St Petersburg to Brasília to Ciudad de la Paz. The longest was a flight: the Portuguese court, 7,716 km from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1808.
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Who held the map? Twelve centuries of the world in flags
The world map from 800 to 2010, each piece of land filled with the flag of whoever held it. In 1000 no land can honestly be shown with a flag; in 1500, 3.7%; by 2010, 97%.
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Named after somewhere else: mapping the places named after other places
I mapped the 3,981 settlements Wikidata says are named after another place. Most names come from a river or the town next door, but 14% crossed an ocean, and Britain gave away more names than anywhere else.
