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Strange Maps | Big Think
bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps
16
Frank Jacobs loves maps, but finds most atlases too predictable. He collects and comments on all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006, first on WordPress and now for Big Think.  Frank can be reached at strangemaps@gmail.com.
#81164 in All

566 - Gotthard Girls Pioneering Intestine

An angelic lady from the pre-raphaelite school of femmes fatales is stretched across a map of Europe. Her raised hands clutch a sketch of the late-19th-century European rail network at two of its bud...

23 may 12

565 - Brit Lit Map

Maps usually display only one layer of information. In most cases, theyre limited to the topography, place names and traffic infrastructure of a certain region. True, this is very useful, and in all ...

16 may 12

564 - A Ghostly Billiard Game

Just before Rip Van Winkle falls into his thirty-year slumber, he encounters the ghostly spectacle of a handful of ancient Dutch colonials playing at ninepins, the thunder rolling across the Catskill...

07 may 12

563 - Pop by Lat and Pop by Long

Did you know that almost 90% of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere? And that half of all Earthlings [1] reside north of 27°N? Or that the average human lives at 24 degrees from t...

01 may 12

562 - Biked Any Good Maps Lately?

GPS technology is opening up exciting new hybrid forms of mapping and art. Or in this case: cycling, mapping and art. The maps on this page are the product of Michael Wallace, a Baltimore-based artis...

26 apr 12

561 - Kaiser Eats World

In a dream-like scene from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, the titular tyrant [1] gently plucks a large globe from its standalone frame, holds it longingly in his arms and dances it across his ...

21 apr 12

560 - A World Map of Heavy Metal Density

Some maps are beautiful because of their rich complexity. Others capture our attention because they are so starkly simple. Cartography has the curious capacity to bypass a map-reader’s critic...

09 apr 12

559 - The World’s Largest Atlas: Cheers Bests Klencke

The map is not the territory [1], but this collection gets closer than most [2]. Earth Platinum, published at the end of February in an edition limited to 31 copies, is the world’s largest at...

28 mar 12

558 - The Road to Slimeville

It aint easy being slime. If youre sticky and viscous, youre going to be the gooey butt of persistent negative stereotyping. Slime-ophobia has been one long (and disgustingly dripping) thread through...

22 mar 12

557 - The First Satellite Map of California (1851)

It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier [1]. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks ...

14 mar 12

556 - The World on your Shoulders: Map Tattoos

I’m still not sure what Pinterest is for [1], but scrolling a recommended collection of maps on the site, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of cartographic tattoos was remarkably high. This ...

08 mar 12

555 - Forza Cornwall! A Journey in Two Legs

Why travel all the way to Italy when you can visit a place much closer by that is shaped like Italy? That is the alluring ruse proposed by this poster, created in 1907 by Arthur Gunn for the Great We...

01 mar 12

554 - The Fool’s Head Map: a Fossil of the Financial Bubbles of 1720

For better or worse, there is little new under the sun [1]. The real estate bubble that burst in 2008 and kicked off the world economy’s present anaemic state, may seem like fresh horror to many. But...

21 feb 12

553 - Steinbeck vs. Kerouac: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

In 1960, feeling he might not be long for this earth, John Steinbeck decided to travel across the length and breadth of America for one last time. The celebrated writer of East of Eden, Of Mice and M...

15 feb 12

552 - When Macbeth Met Hamlet: a Scandinavian Scotland?

To be or not to be Scandinavian, that might be the question soon enough for Scotland, if it decides to become independent. For the time being, Scotland is still a part of the United Kingdom, as it ha...

08 feb 12

551 - Desperately Seeking Dalston: A Field Study

Where is this? The question is simple enough, and in a non-metropolitan environment, the answer may be correspondingly unambiguous. But in large cities, where the flow of human traffic is fast and va...

31 jan 12

550 - The City and the Kitty, and Other Urban Analogies

Surprise meeting with an old acquaintance in the Whitechapel Gallery - Grayson Perry’s Map of an Englishman (discussed in #241). “It’s the work that draws the most people, and gets the most laughs”, ...

25 jan 12

549 - Missouri Pukes and Illinois Suckers: a Pignominious Map of the States

Last April, this blog discussed a map, dating from 1875, that showed the lower 48 states of the US in the shape of a hog: [T]his must be the world’s finest - and possibly only - example of sus...

17 jan 12

548 - Wishful Mapping: a Half-baked Alaska, and the Passage That Wasnt There

What a strange concoction this late-18th-century French map is. Centred on the northwestern part of America, it is an eclectic mix of geographic fact and fiction. Some continental contours are instan...

10 jan 12

547 - Too Soon? The Whisky Flavour Map

Happy 2012! By now, you’re probably still in the earnest stage of your New Year’s resolutions. If one of those is about your determination to cut back on drink, this might not be the be...

03 jan 12

546 - The Underwritten States of America

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But eating that apple is not enough. Where you eat it matters almost as much.  At least it did in the mid-19th century, as demonstrated by these two maps.&#...

26 dec 11

545 - The Mapa Cor-de-rosa: A Portuguese Empire That Never Was

Philip K. Dick never found the source of the mysterious messages he received during his ‘mystic episode’ in early 1974. The science fiction writer had a few theories, though: Soviet sci...

20 dec 11

544 - Alphabet Maps of Great Britain and Ireland

If you’re in the north of England and you’re in a town ending in -by, you’re in former Danish-ruled territory [1]. If the toponym starts with beau- or bel-, it was probably named...

13 dec 11

543 - Double-Dip Cartography

The second dip of the worldwide recession is a bit like that scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where two guards stupidly stare at a horseless knight approaching in the distance.  &...

06 dec 11

543 - Double-Dip Cartography

The second dip of the worldwide recession is a bit like that scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where two guards stupidly stare at a horseless knight approaching in the distance.  &...

06 dec 11

542 - Untamed Wilds to Whiskers End: Travels in Beardland

How is your tache hanging? As Movember [1] is drawing to a close, this might be a good time to examine the tenuous, yet undeniable and intriguing overlap between cartography and facial hair.  &#...

29 nov 11

541 - Ten Map Shorts

Finding maps that are sufficiently strange and beautiful is only half the joy of making this blog; the other is writing up the story to go along with them. But sometimes, fascinating maps are resista...

22 nov 11

540 - "Sham Paris": An Entire City’s Stunt Double

Legend has it that hardly anyone turned up for the opening night of Jean Giraudouxs (1) play La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu. Taking the billboards for the play too literally, Parisian thea...

15 nov 11

539 - Vive le tweet! A Map of Twitters Languages

What a joy these maps are to behold. It’s as if someone took one of those composite satellite maps - you know, impossibly showing the whole world at night, the darkness broken by hubs and stri...

07 nov 11

538 - Just My Plug: Socket Map of the World

The maps discussed on this blog are rarely of any hard, practical use. This one does have real-world relevance - especially if you’re a globetrotting, It’s-Tuesday-so-this-mu st-be-Belar...

01 nov 11

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