10 Of The Most Beautiful Maps Ever Created

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During much of history, maps were designed as much for beauty and display as for accuracy. When maps were hand-drawn, they were difficult and expensive to produce, and ones designed for personal libraries were appropriately lavish to reflect their status as luxury items.

Even in modern times, some map makers design their works to make a point. Others designed them for beauty, and sometimes a map designed for entirely practical purposes is also beautiful.

Google's Most Detailed View Of Earth Across Space And Time

In 2013, Google released Google Earth Timelapse, a comprehensive picture of Earth's changing surface. Yesterday, they made their largest update to Timelapse yet, with four additional years of imagery and a sharper view of the Earth from 1984 to 2016.

There's much more to see, including glacial movement in Antarctica, urban growth, forest gain and loss, and infrastructure development. You can search, pan, or zoom around in the updated Timelapse.

(trhanks Cora)

Google Maps Streetview Player

The Google Maps Streetview Player will take in either a starting point and end point, or a provided file of a route and provide a playthrough of the Google streetview images that are available. Via 'advanced options' you can pick your travel mode: driving, bicycling, transit or walking.

(trhanks Cora)

Mistaken Maps

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The history of map-making is full of educated guesses. As late as the 19th century Africa and Australia contained vast, unexplored interiors. Cartographers often used experience and logic to infer the lay of the land. Unsurprisingly, they were frequently wrong.

Why Are We Still Using Bad Maps?

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At first glance, it seems simple. Just take the globe, peel off the outer layer and lay it flat. Congratulations, you have a map. But not so fast: spheres do not unfold easily into rectangles. Or any two-dimensional shape, for that matter.

One projection, the AuthaGraph World Map, faithfully represents all oceans and continents including the neglected Antarctica. It's not a perfect map and Hajime Narukawa, the creator of the AuthaGraph map, had to cheat a little bit.

Eruptions, Earthquakes & Emissions

The Smithsonian's 'Eruptions, Earthquakes, & Emissions' web application is a time-lapse animation of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes since 1960. It also shows volcanic gas emissions since 1978.

A Map Of Wireless Passwords From Airports

Finding an open wireless connection in many airports isn't always easy, or possible, without a password. Blogger and computer security engineer Anil Polat created an always-up-to-date list of airport wireless passwords around the world.

Visualizing Weather In Real-Time

Czech meteorological company InMeteo created an application that clearly displays meteorological data from around the world and allows you to monitor weather development for any place on earth.

How Long Did Famous Novels Take To Write?

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Did you know that it took J.R.R. Tolkien 16 years to write the 'Lord of the Rings'? Or that John Boyne wrote 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' in only 2.5 days? Have you ever wondered how long it took to craft some of history's most famous books? Take a look at this infographic.

Google Street View Map Of San Francisco In The 1800s

If you've ever wondered what it would feel like to travel back in time and walk the streets of San Francisco, this might be the closest you'll get. Two developers, Dan Vanderkam and Raven Keller, had the brilliant idea to take all the old photographs from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection and put them on an interactive map.

This map functions similarly to Google Street View, except when you zoom in on a particular place, it gives you photos from as far back as 1850. The project, called OldSF, lets you manipulate a slider to change the range of years.

What It's Like To Live On The World's Steepest Street

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Tucked away in southeast New Zealand is Dunedin, a small town with one big claim to fame: It's home to the steepest street in the world. Baldwin Street is 1,150 feet long and has a slope of 19 degrees. On paper, that might not sound like much, but walking up this road is guaranteed to leave you out of breath.

OldNYC: Mapping Historical Photos From The New York Public Library

OldNYC provides an alternative way of browsing the NYPL's incredible Photographic Views of New York City, the 1870s-1970s collection. Its goal is to help you discover the history behind the places you see every day.

And, if you're lucky, maybe you'll even discover something about New York's rich past that you never knew before. The images all come from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection.

Stuff In Space

Space debris, junk, waste, trash, or litter is the collection of defunct man-made objects in space - old satellites, spent rocket stages, and fragments from disintegration, erosion, and collisions - including those caused by debris itself.

Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit. The map is made by James Yoder, an incoming Electrical and Computer Engineering freshman at the University of Texas, Austin. Red dots are satellites, blue dots rocket boedies and gray dots are debris.

Sheep View 360

The Faroe Islands have some of the most beautiful roads in the world. But there is a problem. Unlike almost all other parts of Europe, the Faroe Islands don't exist on Google Street View.

Taking matters into her own hands, Durita Dahl Andreassen decided to create her own version of Street View - Sheep View 360. She gently placed a 360˚ camera, powered by a solar panel, on the back of a sheep that would take photographs as the animal freely grazed the open hillsides of the Faroe Islands.

Get Inside Westminster Abbey On Google Street View

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. You can now visit Westminster Abbey on Google Street View.

Why The Most Popular Map Of The World Is Incredibly Inaccurate

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The most common global map in the world is the Mercator projection. It's used everywhere from classrooms to Google Maps. But because it tries to take a round object and make it flat, it is also incredibly misleading.

A Map Of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You

Some people may be aware that Thailand's chilies and Italy's tomatoes originated in South America. Now, a new study reveals the full extent of globalization in our food supply. More than two-thirds of the crops that underpin national diets originally came from somewhere else - often far away.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture has produced an interactive graphic that allows you to explore were your food originated. You can see the interactive map here.

Watch As The World's Cities Are Born One-By-One Over 6000 Years

Max Galka, a NYC-based entrepreneur made an interactive map that shows when the world's cities were born, beginning with [arguably] the very first city in 3700 BC and continuing up to the present. Use the controls at the bottom to pause/resume the map and to move back and forth in time.

Geographical Fun: Being Humourous Outlines Of Various Countries From The 1860s

Geographical Fun: Being Humourous Outlines of Various Countries was first published in London by the firm of Hodder and Stoughton in 1869. The atlas consists of twelve maps of European countries, each with a unique national stereotype created by the author based on the the outline and shape of the country.

Musicmap

Musicmap attempts to provide the ultimate genealogy of popular music genres, including their relations and history. Musicmap is like a real world map, only the vertical axis represents time and the horizontal axis represents the corresponding super-genre.

To navigate, simply drag the map where you want to go or zoom in and out. Like a real world map, Musicmap is a spherical projection, which implies that the left side crosses over to the right side.