Yahoo user Tzuki has taken a current map of the city of New York, and overlaid it with a historical map of New Amsterdam from 1660.
The current city of New York was originally settled by the Dutch, and was then known as New Amsterdam. When the English took it, it was renamed New York. Comparing the two, you can really see the vast amount of land that has been reclaimed from the ocean. The land the city occupies has at least doubled in the years since it was first settled.
CNN has a very interesting map showing the increase in Obesity rates across the nation. it’s an interactive map. So to see other years besides the one from my screen capture above, you will need to click the link to the CNN website. It’s amazing how fast our nation has put on the weight. Maybe it’s time for the old US to go on a diet.
The above map shows the spread of religious Memes throughout the world. It also highlights the major wars that were directly a result of clashes between religions. I’m not sure about some of the dates for the foundings, but otherwise it’s pretty good. For more maps, go to www.MapsOfWar.com Via VirusHead: Major Religious Memes in 90 seconds
Found this interesting map of US states labeled with the country whose GDP most closly matches. Kind of an interesting way to show how rich the US is in comparison to most of the world. We often forget how lucky we, as Americans, are to live here. But when you see that we live in a place where the GDPs of individual states rival those of large industrialized countries like Canada and France, it becomes a lot more obvious.
The OpenNet Initiative is an organization that tracks and monitors Internet censorship. On their website you can test individual URLs for blocking, and also see interactive maps of censorship throughout the world. Each country and region is rated and what type of content it censors is laid out in detail. The methods and agencies by which the censorship is enforced are also described in detail. All in all, a pretty useful site if you are interested in Internet censorship.
Here is an interesting Google maps mashup. It’s a map of pirate attacks from 2007. The data comes from the IMB piracy reporting center. Looks like Indonesia isn’t a safe place to go boating. Follow the link below to check it out yourself. You can click on each marker on the map to see details about the attack or attempted attack. Pretty cool mashup.
This is the kind of thing that the Google maps API is really useful for.
