Tag: World
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Up and down: every rocket launch since Sputnik, and where it all comes back
I mapped all 7,416 orbital launch attempts since Sputnik from Jonathan McDowell’s catalogue. The world launched a record 329 in 2025, more than half by SpaceX, and half of everything ever catalogued has already fallen back.
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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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Painted places: where landscape painters painted, and how far from home they went
I mapped 8,533 landscape, marine and city paintings from Wikidata and the 4,740 places they show. The most painted place is a river, the Seine, and half the paintings were made more than 231 km from the painter’s birthplace.
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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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When the ice came south: the ice ages mapped, and what lies under them today
I mapped the Northern Hemisphere’s ice sheets at 18 moments of the last 3.6 million years. The last ice age was only the 4th largest; 709 of today’s cities and towns, New York among them, stand on ground its ice covered.
