Tag: Present day
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Pirate hotspots, then and now
I mapped 7,511 pirate attacks from 1993 to 2020 and followed the hotspots as they moved, from the Strait of Malacca to Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea. In 2025 the busiest pirate waters were the Singapore Strait, and in 2026 Somali hijackers are back.
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Where novels are set: a map of fiction’s real places
I mapped the real settings of 7,300 novels in Wikidata. London, New York and Paris dominate, most authors stay within a few hundred kilometres of where they were born, and Denmark has more mapped places than China and India together.
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Where every film was shot: film cities, foreign productions and James Bond on one map
I mapped the filming locations of 23,468 films in Wikidata: Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris lead, Canada hosts the most foreign productions, and the 25 Eon Bond films visited 36 countries and territories.
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The internet’s seabed: every submarine cable, when it was laid, and the choke points
608 cables on the sea floor carry the internet between continents. I mapped when each was laid, how Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft came to part-own 55% of the planned length, and the straits and beaches where dozens squeeze through together.
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Every Tour de France, mapped: from a lap of France to a race that hops
I mapped all 2,427 stages of the Tour de France since 1903, start to finish. For thirty years it was one unbroken loop round the edge of France; now 88% of stages start somewhere new, the race is 42% shorter than in 1926 and faster than ever.
