Strange Maps
A special series by Frank Jacobs.
Frank has been writing about strange maps since 2006, published a book on the subject in 2009 and joined Big Think in 2010. Readers send in new material daily, and he keeps bumping in to cartography that is delightfully obscure, amazingly beautiful, shockingly partisan, and more. "Each map tells a story, but the stories told by your standard atlas for school or reference are limited and literal: they show only the most practical side of the world, its geography and its political divisions. Strange Maps aims to collect and comment on maps that do everything but that - maps that show the world from a different angle."
featured
All Stories
Once you start seceding, who’s to say where it will stop?
Street names can cause diplomatic offence – and sometimes, that’s exactly why they’re there.
Even underground, there would still be a helicopter hovering overhead
Did you know the U.S. is actually almost half empty?
Also, where are you going to find a ram’s horn at this time of year?
How bloody was Australia’s colonial history? Two mapping projects reveal the horrible truth
Possibly the biggest Christmas tree in the history of ever
A Middle-Eastern copy of the famous ‘serio-comic’ map of Europe, with the female figures more modestly dressed
The highest concentration in Europe of places named after saints? Galicia, in Spain.
By 2020, Bitcoin mining will consume more energy than the world currently produces
The Caucasus is dry, the Far East very wet
How the U.S. teaches foreign languages to its diplomats.
Despite accusations of racial stereotyping, most Dutch cities and towns keep the traditional blackface version of ‘Zwarte Piet’.
A gratuity is expected in some countries, but taken as an insult in others
What the region’s train network would look like if all plans and proposals were realised
Do you know you Hangzhous from your Changzhous?
The U.S. divided into Pacific, Atlantic, Interior and Confederate States
A phonetic map to help Warsaw Pact soldiers find their way around the Home Counties
An eye-catching ‘scaly-dragon’ map of Berlin’s public transport system in 1927
Bending the rules of government in exchange for favours or bribes is a worldwide problem. It is certainly not limited to Mexico, but the statistic is shocking.
Also according to this survey, Brazil is the least corrupt country in Latin America
Of course, the reality is even worse than these maps suggest.
Nothing says “late great nation” like a new map of your country with its territory reduced
As the saying goes: “A Ronny alone is in bad company”
How location, temperature and moisture create the world’s biomes
Most Roman emperors died violent deaths, and many were far from Rome when they did
Pretty sure nobody has ever attempted this
Cartesian vortices are *so* 17-th century.