Where people don’t live in the US: The nearly 5 million Census Blocks with zero population.
A summary of the data direct from the source: “A Block is the smallest area unit used by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating statistics. As of the 2010 census, the United States consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks. Of them, 4,871,270 blocks totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no population living inside them. Despite having a population of more than 310 million people, 47 percent of the USA remains unoccupied.”
Unpopulated areas typically consist of parks, grazing land, desert and other places that are challenging to live in. A larger, interactive version of the map can be found here.
Where people don’t live in Canada.
Data from the 2011 Census. Map by Michael Chung.
How much snow it typically takes to cancel school in the US (and the southern parts of Canada).
Where countries import from the most.
Point Nemo, a spot in the ocean that’s as far from land as you can get — surrounded by nearly 9 million square miles of water.
Located in the South Pacific Ocean, Point Nemo is 1,670 miles away from the closet piece of land: Ducie Island of the Pitcairn Islands.
The most popular beers in the world by country.
Most common language spoken in each state other than English or Spanish.
Slate’s Ben Blatt created this map using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Read all about it here.
Prefered camouflage by country.
How it’s possible to sail from Norway to Antarctica in a straight line without hitting land.
Close ups and detailed navigational instructions here.
The most recurrent word on each country’s Wikipedia page.
Heat map of the world’s wealth.
Based on 2009 data from the WorldBank. Each country is colored according to its average annual gross national income per capita.
How long it took to travel in the US in 1800.
And you can compare that to travel times in 1830, 1867 and 1930 here.
US Google autocomplete results: “Why is [state] so…”
Canada Google autocomplete results: “[Province/Territory/City] is…”
The majority of the above maps were compiled from Reddit’s always entertaining MapPorn forum.