Strange maps of the world - See the world as you’ve never seen it before

With the invention of SatNav fewer people are using maps in the traditional way to get from A to B. But as you can see from this collection of weird and wacky maps they can still be fascinating, entertaining and educational tools.

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With more than 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States, Big Mac lovers don’t have to travel far to enjoy their favourite sandwich. This map, designed by Stephen Von Worley shows the density of McDonald’s in the USA and proves that there are more opportunities for burger and fries in the east than in the west. Von Worley worked out that the farthest any American has to travel for a Big Mac is 145 miles.


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At first this looks like a bunch of insignificant white lines, but when you look closer you can start to see the outline of continents. The map is a piece of art by Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, its entitled Airline Routes of the World (Night) and you can see why.


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What would happen if the countries that represent the bottom 5 per cent of global GDP were wiped from existence? That’s the question posed here. As you can see Africa, Asia and the Middle East are badly hit.


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American states are represented here by the flags of countries with an equal population.


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The staggering, but not surprising, facts on this map of the number of inhabitants per doctor around the world demonstrate that Africa falls way behind every other continent when it comes to access to healthcare. In England there is one doctor to every 440 people, compared to a staggering 50,000 people in a couple of African nations.

Sourc e (with more examples)

Thought these were rather interesting. Its a great way to highlight problems our world faces by using its very image to portray them. I think it would make you sit up and pay attention more when its done this way.

Thanks.

Awesome, I had seen 2 of these before but really awesome. Thanks for your effort.

I find the McDonalds one the most fascinating, especially since he worked it out that no American has to travel more than 145miles to get to one. That in itself is sick.

Starbucks would be interesting, I don't know about the rest of the world but they're out of control where I am. In downtown Vancouver there exists a starbucks literally DIRECTLY ACROSS the street ... from a starbucks...

Same in some of the smaller suburban towns, chapters has a location, then sure enough on the other side of the street, a FULL starbucks. It's insane, and there's almost nothing I want more than Starbucks to burn in hell.

A totally different approach is the now out of print Time's Atlas of World History...it came out in the late 70's before computers were used in graphics and publication which in part makes it so interesting...for example when it is discussing the barbarian invasions or Europe the map they used is looking down on Europe from the north pole. Very unusual and very interesting visually.

I have a copy I got off of abebooks.com but most libraries have a copy.

Here is an example:

www.chicagohungarians.com...

upload.wikimedia.org...

Highly recommend it.

[edit on 1-10-2009 by grover]

Originally posted by king9072
I find the McDonalds one the most fascinating, especially since he worked it out that no American has to travel more than 145miles to get to one. That in itself is sick.

Hehe I like that one too - of course I had to open up google earth to see how far my nearest McChicken sandwich is - just so you all know 3km (1.86 miles) walking or 3.88km driving (2.41 miles).

Mind you how many fatties walk to McD's? - I only ever have about 2 a month, I allow my self that - I can think think of 5 in this (small) city - but I think I have forgotten a couple...

Oh wait look - they have a convenient store locator on the site - and yes it gives you waddle distance when you put your post code in

Thanks for the replies guys/gals, im glad you think they are as great as i do.

It would be interesting to see how Starbucks/KFC/Burger King etc look when done the same way. Also, a correlation between high density areas and obesity rates would be intriguing.

I think the 'What would happen if the countries that represent the bottom 5 per cent of global GDP were wiped from existence?' map is also a brilliant one. Scary but brilliant.

Peace.

Awesome! I love this. I especially like the McDonalds map.