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Google Maps Mania
Steve Attewell has created a fun Akira Kurosawa inspired interactive map. His Akira map allows you to explore a 3D map of the world through the lens of the most famous Japanese film-maker.I don't know enough about Kurosawa's films to judge if Steve's map is an accurate simulation of the great director's style and aesthetic. I do know (by peaking at the HTML) that Steve's map works by applying a
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Google Maps Mania
This aerial photo shows Manchester United's Old Trafford football stadium. The photo was taken during World War II, on May 30, 1944, by a US Air Force photographic reconnaissance (PR) aircraft. The stadium (top left) was hit by a German bomb in March 1941 and the damage caused to the south stand can be seen in the USAAF aerial photograph.This aerial reconnaissance photo of Manchester is just
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Google Maps Mania
If, like me, clouds and city lights have so far ruined your view of the Perseid meteor shower then you might enjoy this beautiful Meteor Showers From Space interactive map. The peak viewing time to see the Perseids was on Aug 12 & 13, although the shower will be active for much of August.
The Perseid meteor shower is caused by Earth passing through the ice and rock debris tail of Comet
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Google Maps Mania
Kiezcolors is an interactive map which shows the distribution of land use in Berlin neighborhoods. On the map areas are colored to show whether they are used for business, housing, roads, nature etc. Alongside the street map a tree-map is also used to show the percentage of land used by each category within the highlighted area (the circle of 'undefined' radius).
You can use the map's
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Google Maps Mania
The New York Times has discovered a way for amateur cyclists to compete against the world's elite in the Tour de France. In Watch Amateurs Race Against the Tour de France's Top Climbers the newspaper has used Strava data to compare how amateur cyclists have performed on certain mountain stages in the Tour de France when compared to the fastest Tour de France cyclists (who posted their rides to
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Google Maps Mania
Welcome to the Amazon Underworld is an in-depth investigative series examining the crime and violence that is ravaging the Amazon rainforest. The project, which was conducted by 37 journalists and media professionals from 11 countries, uses satellite imagery, data analysis, and field reporting to map out the criminal gangs and the illicit economies that are driving deforestation, violence, and
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Google Maps Mania
One little known rule of GIS is that if you make an interactive geography game then you have to call it 'City Guessr' or 'City Guesser'. At least I assume that is why there are so many online map games bearing that epithet.
CityGuessr is a fun daily challenge which requires you to identify a location shown on an interactive map. Identifying a location from an unlabeled map can be very hard so
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Google Maps Mania
noclip is an amazing website which lets you move around and explore some of your favorite computer games in glorious 3D.
The term 'noclip' is a common command used to debug computer games. It refers to the process of turning off collision detection in a game world so that the player may pass through solid objects in the rendered environment. This is exactly what the noclip website allows you to
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Google Maps Mania
The Pudding has released another stunning data visualization story. Mapping Record-High Heat in U.S. Cities is an interactive map which shows how many days since your city recorded its record high temperature (for today or of all time).July was the hottest month on Earth in the last 120,000 years. This followed the hottest June ever recorded. Global Heating is happening, which is why The
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Google Maps Mania
I reviewed OSM GPT for the first time earlier today and I have to say I was very impressed with how easy it is to use in order to extract data from OpenStreetMap. OSM GPT's natural language interface for searching OSM is great for geographical searches - for example to find all cafes within 1,000 meters of a location ('get cafes within 1000 meters'). OSM GPT can also be used for creating some
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Google Maps Mania
This week's OSM Weekly links to a new interactive chatbot which allows you to interact with OpenStreetMap data. Rohit Gautam's OSM GPT allows you to use natural language queries to search OpenStreetMap. For example the screenshot above shows the results of 'Get all bars' in New York. It also shows the results of a query to 'Get all McDonald's restaurants'.I don't know how OSM GPT works but I
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Google Maps Mania
Over 50 competitors in last weekend's World Triathlon Championship Series in the UK fell ill after swimming in the sea off the coast of Sunderland. The UK's filthy rivers and sewage discharges have been largely blamed for the outbreaks of diarrhoea among those competing in the triathlon. In the UK the privatized water companies are allowed to discharge raw sewage into rivers when the system
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Google Maps Mania
I can't decide if the Anomaly Observatory is a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek parody or the work of genuine lunatics. Whatever it is - it is wonderfully weird.According to Google Bard - "Beobachtungsstelle für Anomalien (Anamoly Observatory) is a website that reports on paranormal activities. It was founded in 2008 by an anonymous team and has since collected reports of paranormal activities from
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Google Maps Mania
Meta has released a research project which uses AI to find the location of any photographed image. Meta's OrienterNet uses deep learning to determine the accurate position of an image using data from OpenStreetMap. Unlike previous algorithms which have relied on 3D point clouds to identify the locations depicted in images OrienterNet can determine the orientation and position of an image by
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Google Maps Mania
Canadian County in Oklahoma is around 1,000 miles from Canada. This is because the name of the county doesn't derive from the US's northern neighbor but comes from the Canadian River (which apparently gets its name from some Canadians who were once spotted camping on its banks).I discovered the etymology of Canadian County thanks to Lia Prins' interactive map of US country names. Lia's map
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Google Maps Mania
Map Practice: A Game to Learn Countries is a fun new way to learn the locations of countries around the world. The idea behind the game is very straightforward. You are simply asked to identify countries by pointing to their location on a map. Identify the country correctly and it will be colored green on the map.
At the heart of the 'learning' element of this interactive map game is the
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Google Maps Mania
Earlier this year Axios created 50 travel itineraries which allow Americans to travel the world without ever leaving their home state. In Visit Paris Without Leaving Home you can enter the name of any state and retrieve an interactive map which shows an optimal route around the towns and cities in your state which share a name with a foreign location.
Of course if you are French then you
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Google Maps Mania
Two weeks ago I used Map Channels V9 and AI to create a National Stereotypes map. It turns out that I am not the only one who has been inspired by the power of AI to generate geographically themed images. In fact the latest demo map on Map Channels is this International Map of Mascots.The idea behind this map was to create a map of individual country's national animals. According to the notes
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Google Maps Mania
The Washington Post has published an article which explores the reasons why the world famous Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer. Apparently less than half the original trail remains where it was first laid. It also now 150 miles longer than it was in 1937. You can see all the changes made to the trail over the last 86 years in Why the famed Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer — and
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Google Maps Mania
Aurorasaurus is an interactive map of aurora borealis sightings. The website uses crowd-sourced data from Twitter users reporting aurora sightings and NOAA forecasts to show where there are confirmed aurora sightings and to alert people nearby that an aurora is happening.
The map provides "view-lines" which show the predicted areas for an aurora according to the National Oceanic and
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Google Maps Mania
The Overture Maps Foundation has announced its first release of open map data. This initial release of data includes four 'themes':Places - Point of Interest (POI) Data on approximately 59 million places worldwideBuildings - building footprint and height data for 785 million buildings worldwideTransportation - road network dataAdministrative Boundaries - administrative boundaries for Level 2 (
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10:37
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Google Maps Mania
The Fair Internet Report has created an interactive map which visualizes where and when in the world internet users ran speed tests over a 24 hour period (data from June 21, 2023). Mapping 24 Hours of Internet Speed Tests shows a total of 3.6 million speed tests being carried out across the world, all over the course of one day in June.
Each line on the map represents a speed test carried out
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9:09
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Google Maps Mania
time2reach is an interactive map that shows you see how far you travel within a set time period using public transit. The map can currently create isochrone visualizations for 6 global cities: New York, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. If you double-click on the map in any of these six cities an isochrone visualization will show you how far you can travel from that point
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Google Maps Mania
Yesterday's election in Spain has resulted in no clear winner. Going into the election the opinion polls had suggested that the conservative People’s party (PP) would secure a comfortable win and would likely form a coalition government with the far-right Vox party.
After all the votes were counted however PP had won only 136 seats to the ruling left-wing PSOE’s 122 seats. The far-right Vox
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11:19
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Google Maps Mania
Electrical Japan is an interactive map that visualizes electricity supply and demand in Japan. It was created by the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, in order to better understand Japan's energy problems after the 2011 tsunami and to help promote energy conservation.
The map shows the location of all of Japan's power plants, as
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Google Maps Mania
Ubähnchen is a wonderfully smooth animated map of Berlin's subway trains. The map shows all the U-Bahn's trains travelling around Berlin based on the network's timetable.The neat design of colored blocks for the trains with simple shadows moving on top of a schematic transit map really adds to the captivating appeal of Ubähnchen. You can also click on the 'U' button (top-right) to switch to a
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8:14
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Google Maps Mania
Buzzfeed has started a new mapping trend with their AI generated images of state stereotypes. Last week Buzzfeed asked a generative AI image model to create a photograph of a person from each U.S. state, as typically perceived by a European. You can view the results in the post This is What Europeans Think of Us.
I was inspired by the Buzzfeed post to create my own National Stereotypes Map. To
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Google Maps Mania
There is no reason that anyone outside of Philadelphia should be interested in a newspaper article exploring the best way from the city to the Jersey Shore. Unless, of course, that article includes a scrollytelling map race. Luckily that is exactly what the Philadelphia Inquirer's Race to the Shore contains.
on Friday, July 7 five employees of the Philadelphia Inquirer set off at the same
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Google Maps Mania
Last week Buzzfeed asked a generative AI image model to create a photograph of a person from each U.S. state, as typically perceived by a European. You can view the mildly amusing results in the post I Asked AI What Europeans Think Americans From Every Single State Look Like, And The Results Are Just Plain Mean. Anyway, I liked the idea enough to steal it. I spent a few hours asking Bing Image
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Google Maps Mania
You can walk from Zurich to Rome in just over 1 hour. That is 'Zurich Avenue' and 'Crescendo Roma Viale' in Hong Kong (according to Google Maps it will take you 195 hours to walk from Zurich, Switzerland to Rome, Italy).Rome and Zurich are not the only world locations which feature in the street names of Hong Kong. According to Asia’s World City: Around the World in One Day through Hong Kong's
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Google Maps Mania
The political scientist Anders Sundell has posted a Twitter thread which reveals "the countries that look the most like each other". For example (according to Anders) the country which most resembles the United States is Saudi Arabia.
According to the text on each country comparison an "algorithm checked the shapes of all countries in order to find the most similar shapes. All countries were
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9:12
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Google Maps Mania
The Financial Time's investigation Inside North Korea's Oil Smuggling Triad begins with an amazing cinematic pan out from a 3D model of two oil tankers, up through some animated clouds, to a map of East Asia. The whole sequence begins with a 3D reconstruction of an illegal ship-to-ship transfer from the oil tanker Unica to a North Korean ship. This reconstruction then zooms out to a map of East
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9:20
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Google Maps Mania
I am a cartophile. Which means I love maps. But then who doesn't.My cartophilia however manifests itself in a specific way. I like mapping collections of 'things'. And I'm not the only one. There are in fact lots of people who seem obsessed with mapping specific categories of thing.Here are some individual 'things' that I've recently seen mapped:Skyscrapers - Highrises is a project by a four
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Google Maps Mania
During the spread of the Bubonic plague in the 14th Century ships arriving in Venice from infected ports would be required to wait 40 days before landing. This practice led to the origin of the word 'quarantine', from the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning 40 days.This is just one of the many interesting facts in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists interactive map An Illustrated History of the
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9:15
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Google Maps Mania
Ted Piotowski of ShadeMap fame has been experimenting with using LiDAR data to map tree shadows. Ted's ShadeMap currently simulates shadows caused by buildings and elevated land during the course of the day for any day of the year. However like most interactive shade maps his map doesn't show the shadows cast by trees.Shadow maps tend to use elevation and building height data to simulate how
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9:02
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Google Maps Mania
Enter the name of a language into The Language World Map and it will show you all the countries in the world where that language is spoken.You can enter more than one language into the map, which means that you can create some nice comparison maps of different languages. For example the map below shows where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken. This map is a neat visualization of the effect of
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9:03
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Google Maps Mania
Madrid's Almendra Central is an island of bachelors surrounded by a sea of married couples. Spanish newspaper El Confidencial has used 2021 census data to map out whether there are more single people or married couples in every census tract in Spain. An interactive map in the paper's Singles in Your Area, Street by Street colors every neighborhood in the country depending on whether the
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Google Maps Mania
Walk along Church Street as if you were a silent observer watching the world go by.Turn right onto Brick Land like a mermaid swimming in the depths of the sea.Let your worries fade away and turn left onto the High Street.
This is a short extract from a poem which was generated for me by the wonderful A Walking Poem. A Walking Poem generates short poems based on your current location. Share your
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Google Maps Mania
In the very early hours of June 14th the Adriana, a fishing boat overcrowded with migrants, capsized in international waters off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece. It is believed that the boat was carrying 400 to 750 migrants. 104 people were rescued by the Greek coastguard but hundreds died.
The Washington Post has created an animated map which tracks the last journey of the Adriana and
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Google Maps Mania
The best place to spot the Loch Ness Monster is on or around Loch Ness in Scotland. In When, where and how to see the Loch Ness Monster – based on 1,500 years worth of data! the Press and Journal has mapped the locations of Loch Ness monster sightings over the last 83 years in order to determine the best location where you are most likely to spot Nessie. After hours of analysis the newspaper
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Google Maps Mania
New Zealand is often omitted from maps of the world. A fact which has inspired the subreddit Maps Without New Zealand and the Tumblr page World Maps Without New Zealand, both of which collect examples of maps that don't include New Zealand. One reason that New Zealand is often omitted from world maps is that lots of them are centered on or near the Greenwich meridian, which means in most map
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Google Maps Mania
Broadcaster RTBF has published a detailed examination of how global heating is affecting the Tour de France. In Blowing Hot on the Big Loop RTBF uses vintage photographs, historical climate data and rider accounts to explore the effect of climate change on the world's greatest cycle race.In last year's Tour de France the rider Alexis Vuillermoz collapsed from heat stroke at the end of the ninth
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Google Maps Mania
Let's face it your geographical knowledge of African countries is woefully inadequate. If you had to identify the location of Burkina Faso on a map you would probably end up pointing to the Philippines. Well it's time to change that. Today you are going to improve your knowledge of Africa and have fun while doing so. You Don't Know Africa is a collection of three online map games which will
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Google Maps Mania
This week the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland announced that 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest was destroyed around the world in 2022. In reporting this news many media outlets compared the amount of rainforest lost last year as being equivalent to the size of Switzerland. This got me thinking about how often the scale of natural disasters (such as hurricanes
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Google Maps Mania
According to PeopleForBikes Minneapolis is the best large U.S. for cycling. Every year PeopleForBikes ranks the best places to cycle in the United States. This year, using its own 'Bicycle Network Analysis' (BNA) PeopleForBikes rated the quality of the cycling networks in 1,484 U.S. cities. This year Minneapolis made significant improvements to its cycling infrastructure becoming the best large
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Google Maps Mania
Last year we destroyed an area of rainforest equivalent to the size of Switzerland. According to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest was chopped down in 2022. This was a 10% increase on the previous year.
According to the report the two countries with the most tropical forest, Brazil and the Democratic Republic
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Google Maps Mania
The Geoengineering Map shows the locations of over 1,700 geoengineering experiments taking place around the world. The mapped projects include experiments involving weather modification, carbon capture, and solar radiation management.In response to global heating some governments and companies have proposed tackling climate change through large-scale manipulations of Earth's ecology. The
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Google Maps Mania
Last year 35.5 million people (equivalent to over half the population of the UK) were forced to flee their homes and find refuge elsewhere. For World Refugee Day Al Jazeera took a closer look at where refugees come from and where they go. Visualizing the Global Flow of 35 Million Refugees is illustrated with two interactive maps: one showing the countries where refugees originated from last year,
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Google Maps Mania
I live near Abbey Road in East London. The road is named for Langthorne Abbey, which used to be one of the largest Cistercian abbeys in England. At the beginning of the 16th Century the abbey owned most of the land in East London. It also owned a number of local mills and controlled a number of local industries including brewing, shearing, weaving, tannery and farming. Then came the Dissolution
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Google Maps Mania
Next year on April 8 2024 there will be total solar eclipse in the United States. The path of totality will cross Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and will be about 115 miles wide. If you are within the path of totality, you will see the Sun completely blocked out by the Moon for about two minutes. If you want to preview what the solar eclipse might look like for different locations then
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Google Maps Mania
NASA has released an animated map which shows the locations of active fires around the world over the last one and half years. The map Active Fires As Observed by VIIRS, 2022-Present uses observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to show the locations of active fires on Earth for every day from Jan 5th 2022 to 21st June 2023.
VIIRS uses instruments on
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Google Maps Mania
Steve Wozniak and a host of other Silicon Valley luminaries have launched a new company called Privateer, whose mission is to track and map space debris in Earth's orbit.
In 1978 NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler published a paper which argued that if the number of satellites in Low Earth Orbit reached a certain critical level, then even a small collision could create enough debris to cause a
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Google Maps Mania
NASA's Daily Moon Guide is a new interactive map to help you observe the moon on any day of the year. The map shows you what you can see on the moon today with the unaided eye, with binoculars or with a telescope, taking into account the current phase of the moon.The Daily Moon Guide automatically shows you the current phase of the moon. So, for example, tonight you won't see much of the moon
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Google Maps Mania
I have been a huge admirer of OpenStreetMap Haiku for a number of years. OpenStreetMap Haiku is a clever map that can write a short poem about any location in the world based on the OpenStreetMap data for that location. Share your location with OpenStreetMap Haiku and it will generate a unique haiku using data gleaned from OpenStreetMap using Overpass Turbo. I thought that it might be interesting
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Google Maps Mania
The Latin American Political History Map is an animated map which attempts to visualize the ever changing history of Latin American politics, by revealing the political leanings of Latin American countries (and the USA) over the course of over 200 years. I've been following the heated debate on Twitter around this map with some interest this morning. Many of the perceived problems with the map
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Google Maps Mania
I am trying to keep track of developments in the use of artificial intelligence in mapping. At the moment the most interesting experiments seem to involve using AI to help answer geospatial queries. This is leading to some interesting maps which use AI to map answers to users' queries. Over the last few months I've been reading with interest on Twitter how developers have been using AI models (
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Google Maps Mania
In 1939 the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In addition to the agreement to not attack each over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact included the Secret Protocol. In this protocol Germany and the Soviet Union effectively divided up Europe among themselves, deciding which countries they would allow the other to invade.Soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
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Google Maps Mania
NYC Subwaysheds visualizes how far you can get in "40 minutes from each subway station in New York City". Hover over a subway station on this map and an isochrone layer shows the accessible areas around that station in ten minute intervals (traveling by subway and by foot).Mapbox's Chris Whong was inspired to make the map by the ever popular Chronotrains map. Chronotrains visualizes the travel
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Google Maps Mania
The Guardian has published an interactive map which visualizes where you can't afford to live or rent in the UK. Unfortunately the newspaper has mistakenly mistitled the map Find out where you can afford to buy or rent in Great Britain rather than the presumably intended 'Find out where you can't afford to buy or rent in Great Britain'.The Guardian map allows you to enter your annual salary to
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Google Maps Mania
Roman Amphitheaters is an interactive map of Roman amphitheaters built in Europe and northern Africa during the long reign of the Roman Empire. The map has been created using Sebastian Heath's Roman amphitheaters data.The amphitheater markers on the map are sized by capacity. Select an amphitheater on the map and an information window opens providing details on the amphitheaters's capacity,
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Google Maps Mania
The ShadeMap: Direct Sunlight Chart is an interactive map which can calculate the number of hours of direct sunlight for any location on Earth. Unlike traditional sun charts, this map actually accounts for shadows cast by buildings and terrain. If a tall building or mountain blocks out the sun for part of the day this is taken into account in the sunlight chart for that location.
The
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Google Maps Mania
The San Francisco Chronicle has published a fascinating map which visualizes net migration in US counties. On this map counties which have seen a net loss in migration are shown in pink and those that have seen a net gain are shown in blue. The map therefore provides a great overview of where Americans are moving to and from.The Where People are Moving map reveals a pink banana running down the
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Google Maps Mania
After the reunification of Germany in 1990 the German Democratic Republic established an agency in order to privatise East German enterprises. The Treuhandanstalt (Trust Institution) was tasked with overseeing the sale of over 8,500 state-owned companies. Under communism nearly half of all East Germans worked for the state or for state-run companies. Privatising all East German enterprises
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Google Maps Mania
Wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia are causing high levels of unhealthy air conditions across much of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Over 400 fires were reported to be burning in Canada on Tuesday evening resulting in smoke pollution and dangerous levels of particulate matter 2.5 over large areas.FireSmoke Canada has an interactive smoke forecast map which provides