The Smithsonian has a collection of the some of the earliest driving directions. When there were no street names or route numbers, it was a picture book.
I love this: that fork to go to Racine still exists.
There are quicker ways now, but you can still go from Chicago to Milwaukee along the same routes:
Via bookofjoe.
A map of the language used for tweets.
Here’s the gigantic, detailed, version. There’s a world map too: South and North Korea, as always, contrast nicely.
Obviously, most languages follow national borders (you know … that whole ethnic cleansing thing the Europeans are so good at).
But, what really jumps out at me is the extent to which the highway/railway net of Europe is fleshed out: look at Spain, Turkey and Russia to really see that clearly.
Another cool thing I see I Belgium. The top half is the sparse blue of Dutch speakers in Flanders, while the purple underneath it is the French speakers Wallonia. This country just spent over a year trying to establish a new government, and this map makes it clear why.
Switzerland is also a cool thing to look at in the gigantic version: the lakes are clearly visible, especially Lake Geneva. It’s also interesting how much denser the German tweets are, while the French are localized, the Italian are tenuous, and the Romansh are non-existent.
Also interesting is the Catalan section of Spain. Other countries talk as if they have a minority language … but Spain’s got the real deal.
Via bookofjoe via Flowing Data.
There’s a big oil boom in western North Dakota. Using this interactive map from Forbes.com, I charted immigration into Williston, North Dakota for 2009 (the latest year available).
With it, you can start to see the boom starting to reach out across the country.
I can only imagine what this looks like with 2011 data … considering I have an MBA student blogging about his experiences as a wage migrant to Williston.
Here’s a screenshot of what I learned from a very cool interactive map at Forbes.com that can show you immigration and emmigration by county.
Here’s Orleans Parish in 2006:
Doesn’t it just figure … the high plains boomed through the past decade, and more or less skipped the Great Recession, and no one from NOLA moved there.
The most obvious thing in this map is that Bangladesh is still part of Pakistan. Their civil war was still 11 years away.
Here's the full size map (about 2700x3600).
Three other noteworthy features are that:
This is taken from a 1960 Hammond Atlas that I had digitized by 1dollarscan.com.
So cool:
It’s a map of (natural) watercourses indexed by the common noun used to describe it. River and creek, which are used everywhere, are grayed out to emphasize the regional preferences: bayou in the Mississippi delta, wash in the southwest, and brook in New England.
Interestingly, Utah, which is a lot more Scandinavian than most people recognize, predominantly uses the grayed out river and creek, just like the predominantly Scandinavian northern plains.
You’re probably not surprised that I’d be showing the U.S.S.R. in this series. Not surprisingly, it’s on 2 maps.
Here's the full size map (about 2700 x 3600).
The most striking feature of the top map is that it shows the internal division into the 15 Soviet Socialist Republics that were in the Union. These roughly correspond to the countries that became independent since 1991.
The territories outlined in blue within the yellow R.S.F.S.R. are the various autonomous republics, oblasts, okrugs, and krais. Their capitals are marked in the Legend in the top map. A second Legend in the bottom map notes that they are named after their capital, unless noted there.
The insets are fairly self-explanatory, showing areas of deep urbanization and networking.
Here's the full size map (about 2700 x 3600).
This is taken from a 1960 Hammond Atlas that I had digitized by 1dollarscan.com.
I remember having to teach comparative economic systems in the late 1980’s, and having to cover Yugoslavia because it had such a “wonderful” mix of capitalism and communism. What a crock.
Here’s the full size map (about 2400 x 3600).
This one isn’t that interesting. Yugoslavia broke up more or less along the lines of the “republics” and autonomous regions that were its internal divisions.
If you care to, you can make out the pre-1918 borders, with Serbia composed of the (1960) “republics” of Serbia and Macedonia, and the autonomous region of Kosovo-Mitohiyan. As near as I can figure, that name after the hyphen has been just about erased. Go ahead, google it. Montenegro was independent, and all the rest were part of Austria-Hungary.
You can also make out the current borders: Serbia now includes the “republics” of Serbia and Voyvodina, and still claims the autonomous region of Kosovo-Mitohiyan … although the U.N. and 85 countries including most of those in “the west” don’t agree.
For the curious, Voyvodina is historically mostly Serbian, but was wrested from the Ottoman Empire by the Austrians around 1700. The rest of Serbia fought for its independence from the Ottomans through the 19th century.
This is taken from a 1960 Hammond Atlas that I had digitized by 1dollarscan.com.
Here’s Israel prior to the Six-Day War.
Jordan is in pink; the occupied territories of the West Bank are area sticking out of Jordan’s left*.
Here’s the full size map (about 1600 x 2500).
Note that modern Egypt and Syria are labeled as parts of short-lived (1958-61) United Arab Republic.
Note that the Gaza strip is shown as part of Egypt, since it was an occupied territory from 1948-67. The borderline is different if you look closely. Funny, I don’t remember missiles being fired out of it into Egypt, either during or after their occupation.
You can also see the El Auja neutral zone on the Israeli-Egyptian border.
This is taken from a 1960 Hammond Atlas that I had digitized by 1dollarscan.com.
* I don’t agree with calling them “occupied” but this map does emphasize that interpretation.
P.S. Odd: this map appeared on a split page with the map of Poland that I showed in my earlier post. There is not other situation like that in the book. I wonder if they were thinking that a likely reader of the book might be a Polish Jew that had survived the Holocaust and moved to Israel, and might want to show people where they lived and where they used to live with ease?
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