Tag: war
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Shipwrecks of the world, and how many over time
Wikipedia lists 243,071 shipwrecks since 1700. I counted them year by year: three of the five worst years are war years, with 1944 the worst. The huge 1800s plateau owes a lot to British newspapers.
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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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Every nuclear test, mapped
Since 1945 eight countries have set off 2,055 nuclear tests. I mapped every one: 178 in 1962 alone, most of them underground after 1963, and 84% of all the explosive yield on islands.
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Every battle in history, mapped
Wikidata knows of 20,202 battles. I mapped the 13,712 with a place and a date, from 3001 BCE to 2026, to find the most fought-over places on Earth, follow the centre of war century by century, and see how much the famous map is really a map of who wrote things down.
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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%.
