Tag: World
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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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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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The world’s strangest borders: enclaves, exclaves, tripoints and a front door in two countries
I mapped every enclave, exclave and border oddity in Wikipedia’s lists and every tripoint on Natural Earth’s map. There are 42 true enclaves in 85 pieces, most too small for the map to see.
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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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The Earth at night: where the world lit up and where it went dark
Seen from space, the planet gave off 57% more light in 2024 than in 2012. Nepal’s light grew 9.3 times and Africa’s cities blazed up, while war halved the light of Ukraine and Yemen, and new LED street lamps made France look 40% darker than it is.
