30 Interesting Maps To Broaden Your Understanding Of The World (New Pics)

When most of us think about the word “data'' our eyes glaze over as a million Excel cells appear in our minds, putting us to sleep. So clever folks out there rolled up their sleeves and got to work, making visual depictions of data that help us better understand the world.

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Good Political Maps Of Oceania Are Hard To Come By

The Literal Meaning Of Every Country’s Name In Africa

Endings Of Places In Poland

This comes from theFlemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, who created a “cylindrical” map to represent the world in 1569. After all, unless you are looking at a globe, most maps are drawn, painted, or printed on a rectangular surface. Imagine the tube-like maps pirates are always dragging around and you have a pretty good depiction of an early Mercator map.

Average Color Of US State Based On Satellite Imaging

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After all, the real landmasses on the planet, which are spherical, don’t translate 1-to-1 on a rectangular map. Certain sections end up stretched and, as a result, appear to be a lot larger than they actually are. Mercator chose to “focus” the map on the northern hemisphere, where locations closer to the “top” of the map would end up seeming larger. Hence Russia and Canada being absolutely gigantic on so many maps.

Population Density In China

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World Map According To China In 1799

In fact, at the time, these maps were specifically created to aid in marine navigation. While it’s quite irrelevant to us, early seafarers could use a Mercator mapto get a “straight” bearingwhen sailing to a new location. On a map that doesn’t use Mercator projection, the bearing would be a curve, representing the curve of the globe.

U.S. States That Have Banned The Most Books (In Autumn 2022)

Percentage Of Population (25-64yrs) In Europe That Cant Speak Any Foreign Language

Europe’s National Animals

This sort of map has simply stuck around for hundreds of years, leading many people to draw somewhat incorrect conclusions about the real size of things. We are lucky that Russia and Canada really are the two largest countries, so the distortions don’t seem as bad. Other examples of distortion are the similarity between the UK and Madagascar, despite the latter being nearly twice as large.

Belief In Life After Death In Europe

Average Money Spent On Weddings In US States

Roman Coin Hoards, From The ‘Coinage In The Roman Empire’ Project — ‘Hoards Containing Coinage In Use In The Roman Empire Between 30 B.c. And A.d. 400.'

Even more comically, due to its northerly position, Alaska appears to be roughly the size of Australia, despite the fact that the land down under is almost five times larger. You can find an excellent gif depicting the presented and real size of various nationshere.

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