Tag: Place search

• HMS Your Town: which British towns have had a warship named after them?

  

  I matched every Royal Navy ship in Wikidata to the British towns they are named after: 394 ships for 135 towns. Gloucester and Newcastle have had nine each; Lancaster four; Barrow none.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, cities, coast and sea, Long view, Military history, Naming, Place search, Ships and the sea, UK, war, Wikidata

• Who is your town twinned with?

  

  I drew all 29,437 twin town and sister city links on Wikidata as arcs on one map: a post-war European habit that peaked in 1990, reached across the Iron Curtain and out to Japan and China, and lost dozens of Russian links after 2022.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Britain, cities, Europe, Flow map, Government, Place search, Town twinning, Twentieth century, Wikidata, World

• How wrong is your clock?

  

  For 76% of the world’s people the clock runs ahead of the sun. I measured the gap everywhere, and found out why winter mornings in Galicia stay dark until after nine.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories, Games & other interests

  Asia, Atlantic Europe, Clocks and calendars, Place search, Present day, space, Sunlight, World, world maps

• When did your town last see a total eclipse?

  

  London has seen one total eclipse of the Sun in 1,200 years. I computed every path of totality across Britain and Ireland from AD 1000 to 2200 and tested 17,103 places: for most towns the last one was in 1715 or 1724.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  Britain, cities, Ireland, Long view, Place search, space, Space and astronomy, Sunlight, UK

• What’s the king on your postbox?

  

  OpenStreetMap’s volunteers have read the royal cypher on 61,435 UK post boxes. 3,614 still carry Victoria’s VR, 143 the cypher of Edward VIII, and the mix on a town’s streets says something about when it was built.

  Tristan Hotham

  Data stories

  Britain, cities, history, Monarchy, OpenStreetMap, Place search, Present day, Twentieth century, UK, Victorian