Burning Man began with a group of friends burning an effigy on a beach under the Golden Gate Bridge. The annual festival now has a footprint that could span from Presidio to Horseshoe Bay.
20 Maps That Will Change the Way You See the World
I’VE ALWAYS fancied myself a renegade cartographer — my journals and sketchbooks are filled with scribbled street maps of various cities around the world, indicating monuments, museums, and rarely redemptive hostels. To an outsider, they might look more cryptic than helpful, but I’ve always prided myself on being able to find my way around a new city using only three lines — four, at most.
My father taught me how to read a map. Long before I was born he studied real-deal cartography, equipped with an assortment of rangefinders, compasses, and instruments lost on me. But in teaching me how to read them, I learned how to love them, and to this day I’ll pass the time with a map the way someone would a book. Maps are a precious exercise for the imagination, and in staring at them for so long I noticed some peculiarities as I went. For example:
1
Texas over Alaska
Texas vs. Alaska: Score settled.
2
Singapore over Great Salt Lake
Singapore can fit inside Utah's Great Salt Lake.
3
St. John's vs. Paris
St. John's, Newfoundland, is farther south than Paris. Fancy a new tourism slogan?
Angkor Wat is simply massive. Not only could one feasibly fit the Great Pyramids of Giza (and a sphinx, for god's sake!) on the central island, there's room enough left for the Taj Mahal and its gardens.
5
Black Rock City over Golden Gate Bridge
Burning Man began with a group of friends burning an effigy on a beach under the Golden Gate Bridge. The annual festival now has a footprint that could span from Presidio to Horseshoe Bay.
6
Puerto Rico over Netherlands
Take 90% of Puerto Rico's surface area, and what do you get? An area roughly similar to the amount of land reclaimed from the sea by the Netherlands.
7
Philippines over New Zealand
Thousands of islands make up the Philippines, which is approximately the same size as New Zealand.
