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Scientists map massive layer of life just beneath our feet
Directly beneath our feet stretches a world both smaller and much, much larger than the one we know. Scientists have just begun mapping what may well be the largest piece of infrastructure on Earth: a...
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NASA image shows Earth’s lumpiness — exaggerated 10,000 times
No, the Earth is not flat. But it’s not exactly round either. Nor is it — let us stop you right there, smartypants — an oblate spheroid. Close enough, but not a geoid An oblate spheroid is a...
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Every single crewed mission to space — on one definitive map
“A Visual History of Crewed Space Travel” is now available in Big Think’s online store on Pop Chart, where you can also find our first two posters, “A Visual History of the Universe” and “A Literary...
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Ends with a bang: Why lightning stopped stalking the Strait of Malacca
A bolt from the blue that never strikes the same place twice: Lightning is the proverbial placeholder for the unpredictable. Nature’s light show erupts whenever and wherever positive and negative...
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How Earth’s night lights became our most honest economist
Don’t believe the Kremlin. It claims that from 2020 to 2024, the Russian economy grew by 13%. Instead, believe the lights Russians leave on at night. They reveal the country’s GDP actually shrank by 8%...
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American literature, charted in one monumental map
The second map ever featured on Strange Maps — back in 2006, when it was still a fledgling WordPress blog — was a literary take on Maine. It showed the real and imagined places that tether Stephen...
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A brief reminder of the folly of war (Korea edition)
In case you need a reminder that war is not just evil and destructive, but can also be just plain stupid, study this map. It shows how much territory changed hands after the Korean War, which lasted...
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Mapped: America’s 10 most creative acts of noncompliance
Before the United States was a country, it was a rebellion: against kings, taxes, and the general idea that someone far away has the right to tell you what to do. In that very foundational sense,...
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Mapped: How Islam (not Germanic invaders) likely ended antiquity
In 1922, the Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne wrote, “Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would never have existed, and without Muhammad, Charlemagne would be inconceivable.” That controversial thesis...
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Why do we divide politics into left vs. right? Blame France.
Why do we grade politicians on a spectrum from left to right? Blame the French. On September 11th, 1789, France’s newly formed National Assembly voted on whether to grant the king a veto over its laws....
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Cathedral of bones: Inside the world’s largest, deepest, and oldest whale...
Life on Earth is older, stranger, and more grimly beautiful than we have time to consider most days. So take a moment to marvel over the recently discovered dark wonder that is the world’s oldest,...
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How playgrounds reinvented childhood
Fictional though they are, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn exemplify a lost truth about American kids up until the 1880s: Childhood was wild. Like millions of their real-life contemporaries, the...
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Follow the money: Mapping millionaire migration across America
Since 2018, around 102,600 millionaires have left California. In the same period, 61,400 Americans with at least seven figures to their name have packed up and left New York state. Where have they...
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The Irish language is having a moment — and running out of time
In July, the European Union’s rotating Council Presidency will issue official communications in the Irish language, alongside English, in a historic first. Government ministers from Ireland, which...
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The Strait of Hormuz is today’s energy chokepoint. China is tomorrow’s.
Here’s something you didn’t know about the Strait of Hormuz: It is named after Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian sky god. And here’s another: In about 20 years, Iran will likely be unable to throttle the...
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How the modern world turned gray (and why color may be coming back)
No, you haven’t suddenly gone colorblind. This map is in color. In fact, it is a map of color — specifically, of each U.S. state’s favorite house paint color. It’s just that those favorites look like a...
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Ghost map: Europe’s first glimpse of Tenochtitlan shows a city already destroyed
For early 16th-century Europeans, this map was a revelation. It showed a previously unknown island metropolis in the recently discovered Americas — an alien Venice, if you will. However, by the time...
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We saved the world once — we can do it again
In the late 20th century, the world came together to plug a hole in the ozone layer — the part of Earth’s atmosphere that absorbs most of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. If left unchecked,...
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Militarized snowflakes: The accidental beauty of Renaissance star forts
War is hell. But war is also geometry. And geometry can be quite beautiful. Prime examples of that disturbing paradox are the so-called star forts that proliferated throughout Renaissance Europe. Seen...
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Welcome to McKinley: How the U.S. almost colonized a chunk of Cuba
In an abandoned cemetery on Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud stands the weathered headstone of Estefania Koenig. When she died in 1981, at the ripe old age of 95, she was the last American of what had once...
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